Bradenton businessman Carlos Beruff looks to be getting in the Florida Senate race, and is going to have many of Rick Scott‘s political team helping him in what will be a five-way scrum for the GOP nomination.
The other four campaigns are already responding to Beruff’s entry, the first of them being Ponte Vedra Republican Ron DeSantis.
“The last thing the United States Senate needs is another Charlie Crist Republican,” said DeSantis Campaign Manager Brad Herold.
“Carlos Beruff gave thousands of dollars to liberal Charlie Crist over conservative Marco Rubio, even after Crist embraced Obama and his wasteful $800 billion stimulus bill. Even worse, he said he’d stick by Charlie Crist for this very Senate seat whether Crist ran as a Republican or not. It’s a free country,” Herold adds, “but if Carlos enters the race for Senate, he’ll soon find out the same way his friend Charlie Crist did that grassroots Florida conservatives have long memories.”
With most Republicans in Florida seemingly undecided, Beruff presents another option. And judging from the preemptive strike from DeSantis World, a serious one.
This preemptive strike, it should be added, strikes members of Beruff World (such as his media consultant Joanna Burgos) as ironic, given that recently DeSantis asked Beruff for money for his campaign.
“So, just a few weeks ago Congressman DeSantis was asking Mr. Beruff for a meeting to beg him for money and now he quickly begins to attack him? Sounds like Washington’s candidate is afraid of running against a conservative, self-made Cuban American businessman who’s got his eye on changing Washington,” Burgos said on Tuesday.
