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Charlie Crist reached across Gale Platts kitchen table, grasped her hand and explained whos at fault for the 56-year-old widows painful electricity bill: Floridas Republican governor.

Energy companies have given millions to Rick Scott, Crist, a 58-year-old Democrat, said during a stop at her Hollywood home, his voice just audible above clicking camera shutters. Theyre getting a pretty nice return.

Floridas gubernatorial race is the most expensive this year, and among the most malicious. With more than $70 million spent for Scott and Crist, television screens from Miami to Jacksonville have been saturated with commercials calling the candidates fraud, shady, lousy, and slick. The two, who are deadlocked, spent an hour digging at each other in a debate last night.

The unprecedented negativity reflects the status of the fourth-most-populous state as a presidential battleground that has sided with the winner in nine of the past 10 elections, said Susan MacManus, who teaches political science at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Florida is the largest swing state, with 29 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House.

This race is not just about 2014, she said. The big-funding folks have their eyes on 2016. Each party and their supporters are trying to position themselves.

More than $90 million has been donated to campaigns by groups including the Republican Governors Association, the American Federation of Teachers and NextGen Climate Action Committee, the political-action committee started by billionaire environmentalist Tom Steyer. Hillary Clinton, Vice President Joe Biden and Republican governors Chris Christie of New Jersey and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana are among those who have visited.

The acrimony between Crist, who led the state from 2007 to 2011 as a Republican, and Scott was visible when they met for a debate at Broward College in Davie, Florida last night. The event started about five minutes late. Moderators said Scott initially refused to come out because Crist brought a fan on stage, in violation of the rules.

Over the next hour, the two called each other by their first names, while accusing each other of being the worse leader.

Charlie is the zero-wage governor, Scott said, referring to people who lost their jobs and pay during his term.

Rick, there you go again, trying to blame the global economic meltdown on me, Crist said. You just cant trust Rick.

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In Florida, $70 Million Buys TV Rancor as Crist Challenges Scott

DENVER Republican Rep. Cory Gardner argued he would be more bipartisan than his opponent, Democratic Sen. Mark Udall, in a pair of ads released Wednesday as ballots began to land in mailboxes across Colorado.

Udall, a Democrat, and Gardner have been locked in a months-long, neck-and-neck battle over a seat that could determine which party controls the U.S. Senate. Gardner has tried to emphasize his youth and the need for a change in Washington, while Udall has gone after his challenger on women's issues and for his role in last year's government shutdown.

Colorado's Senate race is one of the most expensive and competitive contests in the country. Republicans need to net six Senate seats to win control of the chamber.

Gardner's new ads featured the congressman talking directly to the camera and amount to the campaign's closing argument. In one spot, amid a mountain backdrop, Gardner says Udall's "campaign has gotten too tired, and too mean" and contends he will call out his own Republican Party when it's wrong. In the second, Gardner says he works "across party lines" to help create energy jobs and that Udall "gives into partisanship and helps the president destroy energy jobs."

Also on Wednesday, the environmentalist group NextGen Climate announced it would run an unusual ad attacking Gardner. Running two minutes long and posing as an investigative news report, it slams Gardner for "posing" as a champion of renewable energy and actually being tied to oil and gas companies.

Both Gardner and Udall have largely sided with their respective parties in Congress, but each candidate is trying to convince Colorado voters he is independent and his foe a rank partisan. Gardner repeatedly cites a study saying Udall supported Obama's priorities 99 percent of the time in the Senate, while Udall cites another study saying Gardner to be the 10th most conservative Republican in the House of Representatives.

The two are scheduled to face off for their fifth and final debate Wednesday night. Ballots were mailed to voters on Tuesday.

Under Colorado's new election laws, which were approved by Democrats over Republican protests last year, citizens can register to vote and cast ballots up until Election Day. The system is believed to help the side with the best get-out-the-vote operation, an area where Democrats have excelled in Colorado.

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Colorado Senate candidate Gardner pushes bipartisanship in ads aired as ballots start arriving

House Speaker John Boehner said President Barack Obama should consider a temporary ban on travel to the U.S. from countries where the Ebola virus is rampant.

This administration must be able to assure Americans that we will stop the spread here at home, Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said in an e-mailed statement today.

In addition, two Republican lawmakers called for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas R. Friedens resignation, saying he mishandled the cases of two health-care workers in Texas who contracted Ebola.

Representative Pete Sessions of Texas, a member of the House Republican leadership, told talk show host Laura Ingraham that Frieden had failed to prevent the spread of the virus to two health workers who cared for a man who died of the disease in Dallas. Representative Tom Marino of Pennsylvania also called for Frieden to quit, saying that the Ebola situation is beginning to spiral beyond control.

Sessions, whose district is home to the hospital where the Ebola patients were treated, and Marino commented after the agency said today that the second Texas health worker who tested positive for Ebola flew from Dallas to Cleveland and back before reporting she had symptoms.

Some congressional lawmakers, especially Republicans, have criticized the Obama administrations response to the threat of Ebola spreading in the U.S. Some in addition to Boehner have called for a temporary ban on travelers entering the country from the West African nations battling the disease.

Among those pressing for a travel ban is Representative Ed Royce, who urged the Obama administration today to suspend the issuance of U.S. travel visas to foreign nationals in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, where an outbreak this year has claimed more than 4,000 lives.

This is a reasonable and immediately implementable containment measure that may help mitigate the risk of further translocation to the United States, while not impeding the U.S. response to the epidemic, Royce, a California Republican and chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote in a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry.

Frieden, the CDC chief, has previously rejected calls for a travel ban from West Africa and has said that flights to and from the region are needed for health workers and supplies to help combat the disease. Hes scheduled to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee tomorrow.

So far, there are only two documented cases of people contracting the virus in the U.S. Both are health workers who came into contact with Thomas Eric Duncan, who flew from Liberia to visit family in Texas before showing symptoms. He died at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital on Oct. 8.

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Two Republicans Urge CDC Chief to Quit Amid Ebola Spread

Reform Conservatism: The Future of the Republican Party? | Institute of Politics
April Ponnuru, Policy Director of the Young Guns Network; Ramesh Ponnuru, Senior Editor of the National Review; and Pete Wehner, Senior Fellow in the Ethics ...

By: Harvard University

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Reform Conservatism: The Future of the Republican Party? | Institute of Politics - Video

Papantonio: What Republican Obstruction Has Cost
This segment originally aired on the October 5th, 2014 episode of Ring of Fire on Free Speech TV. The current Republican-controlled Congress has blocked ever...

By: Ring of Fire Radio

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Papantonio: What Republican Obstruction Has Cost - Video