Randy Perkins and Brian Mast squared off in their debate last night to fill the District 18 seat in Congress. The very first question out of the gate was on the water issues plaguing our area. Republican Brian Mast says he supports Republican Joe Negron’s plan to buy land south of Lake Okeechobee and send the water south.
But Perkins said he didn’t think the plan was realistic.
Perkins added that we need to utilize the land that we have north of the lake to stop the water from getting into Lake Okeechobee, fixing runoff, and strengthening the levees. Perkins was recently seen at a dinner with Robert Coker from US Sugar.
Later on in the debate the candidates were asked who they support for President, and Mast said he is sticking with Trump.
The debate was moderated by CBS12’s Liz Quirantes who did an outstanding job. The panel included Nicole Rodriguez from the TC Palm, who asked Perkins if he wanted to apologize to Mast after a heated exchange during an editorial board meeting for Treasure Coast Newspapers which was broadcast over the internet. Perkins refused to apologize, but that didn’t seem to bother Mast. It also included George Bennett from the Palm Beach Post and Jana Eschbach from CBS12.
You can watch the entire debate online at CBS12.
At the same time that Perkins and Mast were holding their debate in Palm Beach, Marco Rubio and Patrick Murphy were holding their debate at the University of Central Florida. Murphy continually attacked Rubio over his support of Donald Trump, his poor attendance record as Senator, and his reluctance to commit to a full 6-year Senate term.
Rubio fired back, bringing up the CBS Miami report that Murphy has inflated his resume and that Murphy hasn’t accomplished anything in Congress during his two terms. The entire debate can be seen online at WFTV dot com. The two have one other debate scheduled for October 26th. They had agreed to a Univision debate, but no date has been set for it.