It started.
The rain of negative mail we all knew we were going to get in the Republican primary
for Senate District 40 began this week as an 8 1/2 by 11 piece landed in mailboxes. And former State Rep. Jose Felix “Pepi” Diaz — or his side, anyway — has drawn first blood against former Sen. Alex Diaz de la Portilla.
“Alex Diaz de la Portilla 16 years.. of failure,” it says on the front. “For 16 years, career politician Alex Diaz de la Portilla has raised our taxes and wrecked our economy,” it says on the front. The back has another photo of the former senator from his time in Tallahassee (not one of the best) and the
same message: “Alex DLP’s higher taxes have killed jobs and hurt seniors,” it says, going after his bread and butter (the over 60 voter).
“Alex Diaz de la Portilla isn’t really conservative,” it says, with a checklist of his tax and spend plan. “His 16-year voting record proves he is just another tax and spend liberal.”
Oooooh. Them there is fighting words. Someone just called DLP a liberal. There are probably a few dozen things he would rather be called: Scoundrel, hard-headed, arrogant, evil genius even. The Dean did not return a call for immediate comment on Friday, but Ladra does not think que se queda callado.
Diaz has told Ladra and others that he was not going to attack DLP — from his own PAC, anyway. And so far, it’s true. This mailer was paid for by Making a Better Tomorrow, a political action committee that has existed since 2014 and which is funded mostly by other PACs, which is a roundabout way of hiding money. Ladra is still working on it.
Read related story: Will he or won’t he? Senate 40 race waits on Jose Felix Diaz
But this is just the first of what will likely be a series of attacks on DLP, who is leading in both polls that Ladra knows about, both his own internal poll, which has him up 36 points, and a GOP poll that has the former senator leading by a smaller double digit figure.
It is a short election cycle so there’s very little to lose by calling your opponent a career politician and a liberal and using the words higher taxes and hurting seniors.
But it’s possible that this is not the last of it. Diaz, er, I mean his supporters, will keep attacking DLP, whose name recognition is higher, because there’s very little else they can do. Absentee ballots drop in a month or so and there is no way Diaz can make up the difference in name id between now and then.
So the forecast is for a deluge.
Senate 40 GOP race gets ugly fast with attack on Alex DLP added by Ladra on
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