CUTLER BAY, Fla. – Florida’s U.S. Senate race reached a boiling point when the two campaigns came face to face during an early voting event in Miami-Dade County.
Republican Sen. Rick Scott’s team was recording when his opponent, Democratic former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell and her people got off their campaign bus and walked right into his campaign event.
The two crowds of supporters ended up in each other’s faces.
There was no outright violence, but certainly some blocking and defensive moves were made by members on both sides.
This Senate race has been heated and somewhat ugly from the start.
Mucarsel-Powell is within a margin-of-error tie in her bid to unseat Scott.
His supporters in Miami-Dade have repeatedly messaged the word socialist, knowing how strong that resonates with those who have come from dictatorships.
One of the woman seen confronting Mucarsel-Dowell is Alina Garcia, the Republican candidate for Miami-Dade Supervisor of Elections.
Garcia said she has no regrets about her passionate and partisan chants.
“But I am not the Supervisor of Elections and I have a right to my own opinion, everybody has the right to an opinion,” she said.
Both she and her Democratic opponent, J.C. Planas, appeared on “This Week in South Florida” last month and they promised to run a fair, nonpartisan elections department.
On Monday, Planas said: “The fact that my opponent participated in this harassment of a U.S. Senate candidate, is morally disqualifying from being a fair and impartial supervisor of elections.”
Said Garcia: “In communist countries when you have a group of people and want to shut them up, you send agitators and you try to shut them down and that’s exactly what they were doing.”