TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – President Trump has waded into the Florida governor’s race again, tweeting that Mayor Andrew Gillum (D - Tallahassee) was corrupt, and there is concern that advertisements are tarnishing Tallahassee's image.
Florida TV viewers have been bombarded with ads like this one, in multiple rotation.
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"20 FBI agents have spent two years investigating the city in Andrew Gillum's tenure," one ad says.
On Monday, Trump tweeted that Gillum was a, "thief."
It’s not just Floridians, but the entire nation that is seeing Gillum and his city being bashed on cable news programs.
"They just get this overall impression that Tallahassee is one of the most corrupt cities in the country and that we're one of the most violent cities in the country and that's really hard to overcome," said FSU Political Scientist Carol Weissert.
PR guru and former Tallahassee Chamber Chairman Ron Sachs said the tweet was, "Somewhat un-presidential, for a president to have enough time to bother to tweet an attack on an American capital city."
Evan Power, the Tallahassee GOP chair, wants voters to know the criticism is directed at Gillum, not the city and its people.
"He's not saying it's a bad place to live, he's saying we a have a bad, a not well-run city government," said Power.
One of the big pushes has been to attract more seniors to retire to Tallahassee, but all the advertising is likely to make that more difficult.
The Tallahassee mayor has said repeatedly that he is not the target of a federal investigation and has called on the FBI to tell people what it knows.