The Miami Herald endorses Obama. McCain's bus tour is making five stops along the Interstate-4 corridor concluding with an evening rally in Sarasota. - TAB
10.23.08: Crist on the radio: Don't spread the wealth || Gov. Charlie Crist is hitting the airwaves today with a John McCain radio ad in which Florida's sunny chief executive almost brings himself to say something bad about Democratic Sen. Barack Obama. Here's the script: "This is Governor Charlie Crist. Let me tell you why I support my friend John McCain. He will lower your taxes. He will stop wasteful government spending. John McCain knows that people don’t want to 'spread the wealth.' He knows that Congress should let you keep more of your money, and not take it away. Thank you very much." Crist is campaigning with McCain today along the Interstate-4 corridor and plans to do more stump work for McCain-Palin over the weekend in South Florida. This a little more noteworthy than usual, perhaps, since the governor has been asked by Republicans to get more visible in the campaign, particularly paid media. - Orlando Sentinel (endorses Obama).
10.23.08 Video: McCain interview today with WPTV, West Palm Beach, FL
TAB
McCain goes after Obama in Ormond Beach Florida rally
Daytona Beach News-Journal (Endorses Obama)
by James Miller
October 23, 2008
ORMOND BEACH –- Republican presidential nominee John McCain struck a defiant tone this morning in a rally north of Ormond Beach, where he accused his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, of being willing to say anything to get elected and being unready to lead in a crisis. Flanked by local business owners and state Republican leaders, McCain hammered Obama on what many have argued is the Illinois senator’s strong point: the economy.
Obama, McCain said, is advancing an economic plan that would stifle small business by raising taxes on many of the people who own them. “Senator Obama is more interested in controlling who gets your piece of the piece of the pie than growing the pie,” McCain said at the rally, which was held in the lumberyard of Allstar Building Materials on U.S. Highway 1.
The Obama campaign issued a sharp response shortly after the Ormond Beach event. “Last week Senator McCain called Obama’s tax cuts for working people ‘welfare.’ Today he’s claiming Senator Obama doesn’t do enough to help the unemployed,” the statement said. “The only thing consistent about these attacks is how dishonest they are.”
Speaking to a loud audience that jammed the large lumberyard, McCain, a veteran senator from Arizona, said he was the candidate ready to lead the country in times of economic difficulty and global peril. “I’ve been fighting for this country since I was 17 years old, and I have the scars to prove it,” said McCain, a Navy veteran who was held prisoner of war in North Vietnam during the Vietnam War. His message was well-received by a highly partisan audience. On Tuesday, organizers said they had asked for 4,000 tickets, which were almost gone by midday.
The Ormond Beach rally was the first stop on a bus tour centered on the Interstate 4 corridor today.
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10.23.08 MSNBC: Ormond Beach, FL. – After giving a hard-hitting interview to the Washington Times yesterday in which he was stingingly critical of the Bush Administration, McCain continued his offensive today, forcefully calling on the Treasury Department to adopt his plan to purchase distressed mortgages. “Let’s go out and buy up the bad mortgages and give them a new mortgage at a level they can afford so you can stay in your home so if your neighbor defaults he doesn’t bring down the value of your homes with him,” McCain declared, banging on his podium. “And let’s realize the American dream. I call on the administration to act now and buy up these home loan mortgages and keep people in their homes. And why isn’t the secretary of the Treasury ordering them to do that?” In the past, McCain has expressed the opinion that this administration isn’t doing enough to address the housing crisis, but never as forcefully as today. He has never before so adamantly ‘called’ on the administration to act more aggressively to address the problem, but on a day when McCain is focusing on small businesses, his criticism became a bit more direct. And McCain ended his critique by asking the crowd of several thousand gathered in the loading dock of a local building materials factory a very pointed question about his opponent’s preparedness: “Are you ready to trust America’s national security to an untested leader in these times of war?”
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Obama holds edge among early Florida voters
Sarasota Herald-Tribune (Endorses Obama)
Lloyd Dunkelberger
October 23, 2008
Floridians continue to head to the early-voting polls in record numbers and a new poll shows Barack Obama with an edge among those early voters. Through Wednesday, 482,000 Floridians cast ballots at early voting sites _ an average of 161,000 votes per day with no signs yet of it decreasing. Democrats held a strong lead among those voters, claiming 55 percent of the ballots to 30 percent for the Republicans and 15 percent for independents and third-party voters. More than 1.6 million absentee ballots have been requested, with the Republicans claiming 48 percent of those ballots and the Democrats 36 percent.
A new poll from Quinnipiac University shows Obama leading John McCain among the early voters by a 48-44 percent margin, although the pollsters said Obama’s advantage amounted to a statistical tie since the lead was within the group’s margin of error. Overall, the poll, which was conducted Oct. 16-21 among 1,433 likely Florida voters, showed Obama with a 49-44 percent lead in Florida _ a slight narrowing from an Oct. 1 Quinnipiac poll that gave Obama a 51-43 percent lead. The poll has a margin of error of 2.6 percent. Obama leads among women voters by a 51-42 percent margin, while McCain leads among white voters by a 51-42 percent edge.
The poll showed Florida voters had a “slightly” negative view of Sarah Palin, McCain’s running mate. Only 41 percent of the voters had a favorable opinion of the Alaska governor, while 43 percent were unfavorable. The economy remains the top issue among Florida voters, with a majority saying they trust Obama more than McCain on that issue. But McCain had the majority support on his ability to handle foreign policy as opposed to Obama.
Peter Brown, the assistant director of the Quinnipiac Polling Institute, said Obama has a lead because he has brought the former Hillary Clinton supporters into his camp. “The number of Sen. Hillary Clinton supporters who said they will defect to back Sen. McCain has dropped significantly,” Brown said in a statement.
