Watching former U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich turn an embarrassing question into a rallying cry against the “liberal, elite media,” brough back a memory from my campaign for the Florida Senate in 1978. I was running against a long time incumbent Miami Senator and this was the first debate of the political season, held at the venerable Tiger Bay Club in the downtown Dupont Plaza Hotel. My wife and I had lost a child during pregnacy earlier in the year, which required me to be with her and miss some days of the Special Session of the Legislature. As I got up to speak at Tiger Bay, I noticed a brochure of my opponent criticizing my absence during some of the Special Session. I was so angry that I pointed to my opponent sitting right next to me on the podium and shouted in his face, “At that time I was with my wife, and would do it again.” Although the crowd was about evenly divided, the shouting of support was deafening. One political commentator was heard saying, “This race is over.”
