Crist takes aim at Rubio's bona fides as conservative

Facing Marco Rubio's avalanche of momentum in the Republican Senate primary, Gov. Charlie Crist's best shot at winning - and salvaging his political career - is to redefine Rubio's image.

Rubio, Crist will contend, isn't the conservative purist that the Miami Republican and adoring conservative pundits have claimed.

Crist has the money for ads to repaint Rubio, but will he have the ammunition?

Few politicians could spend a career like Rubio's - 2000-08 in the Florida House, the past two years as speaker with the power to control all House legislation - without compromising occasionally.

"Compromising ideas is acceptable. Compromising principles is not," Rubio said. "I've never compromised on my principles."

Rubio's record is conservative. Many supporters of former Gov. Jeb Bush, and even Bush, consider Rubio the inheritor of Bush's anti-government social conservative mantle.

There are areas, however, where the record doesn't match the rhetoric.

In a harbinger of the ad war to come, Crist's campaign is attacking Rubio on those issues. In some cases, Rubio doesn't deny the specifics. Instead, he contends Crist was more liberal on the same issues.

For example, Rubio acknowledges backing a cap-and-trade plan to cut carbon emissions but says that was to forestall a worse Crist plan.

To Crist's charge that Rubio backed a $60 million tax break for the Florida Marlins stadium, Rubio replies that Crist backed that and other stadium subsidies.

Crist campaign manager Eric Eikenberg responded that Rubio "needs to stand up to his own rhetoric."

Rubio said, "The fact that the governor is falsely attacking me for things he himself supports speaks volumes about his record and his candidacy."

Here are issues on which Crist contends Rubio's record and rhetoric don't match:

Stimulus spending

Blasting Crist for supporting President Barack Obama's economic stimulus plan is the bedrock of Rubio's campaign.

A photo of Crist embracing Obama at a February 2009 rally in Fort Myers to promote the stimulus has become Rubio's iconic campaign image. Last week, Rubio went to Fort Myers to mark the anniversary of the event.

He also opposes the Obama plan for $13 billion in stimulus spending to begin a national high-speed rail system, including a $1.25 billion grant for a Tampa-Orlando leg.

Rubio acknowledges that as governor, he would have accepted some of the money.

"The central issue is, if Charlie Crist had been in the Senate he would have been one of only three Republicans to vote in favor of the stimulus plan, and if I had been in the Senate, I would have voted against it," he said.

Once the program was passed, accepting the money is a different question, he said. "That's a red herring."

"Ultimately, I would have accepted those portions of the money that would not have put Florida in a worse position off in the future than it is right now."

Taxes

"I have never voted for a tax increase," Rubio says on his Web site.

However, he has voted for actions that some neutral observers call increases in a tax he says he abhors: property taxes.

As a West Miami city commissioner in 1998-99, he cast votes on budgets that included property tax increases, according to news reports.

While he was in the House, and property values were soaring statewide, the Legislature shifted the burden of education funding from general revenue to property taxes it requires school districts to levy, said Kurt Wenner, of Florida TaxWatch, a nonpartisan tax watchdog group.

State-required property taxes more than doubled to $8.2 billion in 2008, Wenner said.

At the same time, the Legislature cut taxes it imposes directly - inheritance taxes, corporate taxes and intangibles taxes - that would have helped pay for schools.

Rubio responds that he never voted to increase tax rates in Miami or statewide.

"I have never supported an increase in the tax rate," he said. The increased revenue was "a function of property values. The tax rate is what the government controls."

Rubio also notes that he sought to do away with all property taxes on homestead property, including the school taxes, replacing them with an increase in the state sales tax. That "tax-swap" idea, which would have required a constitutional amendment, didn't make it through the Legislature.

Rubio has been endorsed by Grover Norquist, a Republican activist and founder of the anti-tax Americans for Tax Reform, who says Rubio has adhered to his "no tax increase" pledge.

Cap-and-trade

Rubio repeatedly has blasted Crist for supporting action against climate change, in particular, for backing a cap-and-trade plan to cut carbon emissions, but in 2008 Rubio backed creation of a state cap-and-trade plan.

Such plans let polluters buy credits for emitting pollutants. Companies that cut emissions get credits they can sell.

In 2008, the Florida Legislature, with Rubio's backing as speaker, passed a bill directing the state Department of Environmental Protection to create such a plan; the House voted unanimously in favor.

Rubio said his goal was to prevent Crist's cap-and-trade plan, which he calls "European-style" and "California-style," from taking effect by executive order.

His bill, he said, would establish a "market-based" plan and give the Legislature, not the governor, the final decision on implementing it.

Rubio said last week that he doesn't accept the scientific evidence for human-caused climate change.

Immigration

In his campaign, Rubio has taken a hard line on illegal immigration - not a popular stance in his heavily Hispanic home of Miami.

In 2008, Rubio's last year as speaker, he declined to make a priority of proposed bills that would have cracked down on illegal immigration, including requiring law enforcement, social service agencies and government contractors to use federal citizenship verification.

The bills, opposed by Rubio's Hispanic colleagues from South Florida in the Legislature, died in committee.

Rubio responds that the same bills failed to pass before and after he was speaker and that under his leadership the legislation got its only committee hearing.

He also contends Crist is weak on the issue. Crist backed Sen. John McCain's immigration reform plan, reviled by conservatives as amnesty.

Rubio says immigration policy "should consist of border enforcement, fixing the visa process and ensuring that no law extends amnesty to illegal immigrants."

English as official language

In June, Rubio got a major break, an endorsement by South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, one of the Senate's hardest-line conservatives, a Tea Party hero and the first senator to break ranks with party brass and back Rubio.

Rubio said then that he agrees with DeMint's positions on issues, including making English the official language. He was quoted as saying only "nuances" separate the two on immigration issues.

One of those nuances is crucial. DeMint says government services and documents should be provided in English only - heresy in much of Florida, particularly in Miami.

"I do believe English is the official language of the U.S. government. I do believe it's a unifying language," he told the Tribune, but, he added, "I have no problem with documents being translated into, for example, Spanish or Creole.

"I'm not talking about outlawing the ability of government to communicate with people in the language they're familiar with."

Pork

Rubio campaigns as the candidate of limited government; that doesn't mean he has been immune from earmarks, called "turkeys" or "member projects" in Tallahassee.

In 2007, the Legislature, with Rubio as speaker, passed a budget that Florida TaxWatch said had "a near record" 505 turkeys that were worth $256 million. About one-fifth of them, worth $47 million, were for Miami-Dade County.

Crist eventually vetoed turkeys worth $459 million.

Rubio responds that he didn't request any member projects from 2004-08 and that the 2007 budget the House passed was lower than the budget Crist proposed and lower than the previous year's state budget.

Rubio's campaign also offered research comparing his career with that of the previous speaker, Allan Bense.

Rubio requested fewer member projects during his career than Bense, and as speaker he presided over production of final budgets with less turkey spending than Bense's two years, that research states.