Marco Rubio's humiliating attempt to embrace Donald Trump has now been consummated. A few days after Rubio declaredthat "[w]e have to make sure that Donald wins,"Trump told supporters at a rally in Florida, "I endorsed Marco. He endorsed me. Go for Marco!" Before Rubio made his infamous about-face and decided to run for re-election, Trump had urged him to do so on Twitter, but this is far more explicit, and since it was in person rather than online, it makes for much better fodder for Democratic attack ads.
It's also a kiss-off to self-funding businessman Carlos Beruff, who has berated Rubio non-stop for failing to adequately support Trump—though Trump probably has little idea who Beruff is. The same is true of most primary voters, since a new survey from St. Pete Polls finds Rubio with a giant 55-22 lead on Beruff. Believe it or not, that's actually the closest that any pollster has shown the race, but it's still far from close. Beruff can keep spending his own money to hammer away at Rubio, but with his chief line of attack seriously undermined, it's hard to see how he has a way forward.
However, even though Beruff may have just gotten kneecapped, Rubio has a bruising general election to look forward to, and Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy has just fired off the first warning shot. In a new TV ad, Murphy blasts Rubio for owning the worst voting record in the Senate, saying that while "people are working hard just to get by" in Florida, "in Washington, Marco Rubio stopped showing up for work." Murphy then links himself tightly to President Obama as a photo of the two appears on screen, saying he'll work to protect Social Security and a woman's right to choose.
While it might seem strange or even concerning that Murphy is looking toward November when he still has a primary to worry about, the situation has shifted in his favor on the home front.
After more than a year of static polling showing the Democratic nomination a tossup, Murphy has finally broken the race open with less than four weeks to go before primary day. A new survey from St. Pete Polls finds Murphy leading fellow Rep. Alan Grayson 45-20, by far the biggest advantage either candidate has sported this year. While Grayson has seen his campaign suffer badly in recent weeks following accusations from his ex-wife that he physically abused her, the more likely explanation for this new gap is Murphy's dominance on the airwaves, and in particular, ads featuring endorsements from Obama and Joe Biden.
Not only have the Murphy campaign and the Senate Majority PAC run spots showcasing the president and vice president, but a pro-Murphy super PAC called Floridians for a Strong Middle Class just threw down another $520,000 to simply re-air SMP's own ad. That suggests this is an effective message, and it ought to be: The vast majority of Democrats have high opinions of Obama and Biden.
Grayson, meanwhile, is reportedly running an adclaiming that Murphy is "looking to cut Social Security," but we can find neither hide nor hair of it online. And it may be difficult to find on TV, too, since there's no way Grayson can advertise as heavily since his warchest is far smaller than Murphy's. But just how much smaller we don't actually know. Rather remarkably, even for Grayson, his campaign filed a second-quarter fundraising report that said it had spent a total of zero dollars between April and June.
The same report claimed that had raised just $55,000 for the quarter and finished with a feeble $484,000 on-hand, but obviously none of these numbers can be trusted. When Politico asked the Grayson campaign about this, it said that it had raised $1 million and had $400,000 left over, and that that it would submit a corrected report. That was on July 26, and the original report was filed on July 15, so we're coming up on three weeks in which Grayson has failed to properly disclose his campaign finances as required by law. And at the moment, that's far from his worst problem.
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