When Bill McCollum ran in the 2004 Senate Primary, Republican opponent and eventual victor Mel Martinez sent out a campaign flyer calling him the "new darling of the homosexual extremists. Now insurgent billionaire candidate Rick Scott is attacking McCollum for supporting supposedly "pro-abortion and pro-homosexual" Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 presidential primary.
For their part, we're sure Florida gays are horrified that anyone would claim they have anything to do with Bill McCollum.
According to Politico, Scott's campaign sent out a memo to the press that basically repeated over and over again that "Rick Scott is a conservative" and "Bill McCollum is more liberal than you think."
The memo tries to make the point "McCollum is more liberal than you think on life issues" by, in part, highlighting his support of Giuliani: "McCollum endorsed pro-abortion and pro-homosexual rights candidate Rudy Giuliani for president in 2008 and was a Giuliani campaign leader in Florida."
While it's true that McCollum supported Giuliani, it's not exactly true that McCollum is a pro-abortion or pro-homosexual candidate himself.
Guiliani is pro-choice, but these aren't views that McCollum himself shares. McCollum sent out a flyer of his own claiming he was the real pro-life candidate, and voted for major pro-life bills while a member of the congress.
Giuliani has come out in favor of some gay rights, but doesn't publicly support gay marriage.
McCollum supported hate crime legislation (which triggered Martinez's dirty "darling" attack), but generally doesn't even come close to Giuliani in the former mayor's relatively liberal views of gay rights. Remember, this is the man who paid $120,000 to George Rekers to testify for the state's case against gay adoption.
