The Forward notes that the debate on Paul Ryan’s Medicare proposals trickled down to a Florida congressional contest within little more than an hour of Mitt Romney naming his running mate.
The Forward reports:
At 10:43 a.m. on August 11, Lois Frankel, the Democratic nominee for Congress in Florida’s heavily Jewish 22nd Congressional District, issued a press release slamming [Adam] Hasner, her Republican opponent, for backing Ryan’s Medicare plan.
Frankel and Hasner are competing over a newly drawn district in Broward and Palm Beach counties, the heart of Jewish South Florida. Both of the candidates are Jewish.
Frankel said in an interview with the Forward that she had always planned on attacking Hasner over his support for Ryan’s Medicare cuts. But she added that Romney’s pick of Ryan for the vice president slot was a political gift that could significantly boost the profile of the issue.
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“For me, it was going to be a top-line issue because of the nature of the demographics in my district,” Frankel said of the Medicare issue in an interview with the Forward a few days later. “Most people weren’t playing attention to what the Ryan plan is, but now people will know.”
Hasner’s camp though insisted to the Forward that the issue would not be a liability:
“We don’t think it’s a liability at all,” said Brad Herold, campaign manager for Florida Republican congressional candidate Adam Hasner. “[B]y picking Paul Ryan they made it very clear that those are the issues we want to talk about.”
