The race to become Florida’s next U.S. Senator has seen its share of attacks, from the petty to the egregious. In Friday’s debate, Charlie Crist outdid them all by playing racial politics, all while hiding behind a newspaper masthead.

It begins with La Gaceta, a 20,000-circulation Tampa weekly that publishes in English, Spanish and Italian. The paper endorsed Crist on Oct. 8, writing that Rubio had “turned his back on those who brought him to the dance – his family, the Hispanic community – and we won’t forgive him for it.” Lest anyone doubt how seriously they were taking the matter, the paper’s editors referred to Rubio as “Marc Rub” throughout the entire editorial, writing that, “we have stripped Marco Rubio of his Hispanicness and the vowels from his name.”

Enter Charlie Crist. “I wanted to talk about a very respected newspaper right here in Tampa, La Gaceta,” Crist told the debate audience. “These are their words, not mine, Speaker, that you’ve turned your back on your Hispanic family.”

Rubio has confronted the racial issue before. After Harry Reid told reporters in August that, “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican,” an upbeat Rubio appeared on Fox News to decry the idea of a monolithic Hispanic voting bloc.

Sitting across from Crist on Friday, Rubio’s response was similar. But this time, his anger was palpable.

“We’re all used to hard-knock politics in these debates, but that’s — quite frankly, governor — offensive and outrageous for you to talk about me turning my back on my Hispanic family. For you to even bring that up in a debate like this is outrageous,” Rubio said, before describing how his parents emigrated from Cuba and worked blue-collar jobs to provide opportunities for their son. “The lessons that I learned from them are what carry me forward every single day. They are what confirm to me how great our country is. Not only am I not turning my back on them, governor, I am fighting so that my children can inherit the kind of country they worked so hard to leave me.”

Prior to the face-off, the debate had been, at times, entertaining and humorous.

Crist started off with a slip-up by blasting, “the right wing of our party,” though he hasn’t claimed a party since he left the GOP in April.

Meek, a congressman since 2003, prompted a few chuckles of disbelief in the press room by saying, “It’s important to know that I’m not a politician.” Similarly but more bizarre, Crist labeled Rubio as a “political insider,” at one point. That’s a hard sell, since Crist won his first election when Rubio was still in college, and he has been a fixture in Florida politics ever since, first as a state legislator, then as education commissioner, attorney general, and now governor.

Rubio called Crist’s centrist self-depiction “a fairy tale that only you believe.” Meek piled on, suggesting video evidence. “Both of these gentlemen have been on stage, ‘drill baby drill,’ standing behind John McCain, standing behind Sarah Palin — we have the tape, governor,” he joked, as if trying to preempt a flip-flop.

It’s an odd détente that has characterized the three-way race. Rubio and Meek didn’t pull any punches against each other, disagreeing vehemently on whether to extend the Bush tax cuts, and invoking the opposing epithets “tea party” and “Nancy Pelosi” to describe each other. But they often find common ground in their mutual disdain for Crist’s apparent opportunism.

“I respect the fact that you know where you stand on the issues,” Rubio said to Meek at one point. “I think the issue between you and I is we have different views on government, but we’re having a debate on that. You know where you stand on the issues, and I know where I stand on the issues.”

The candidates did tread some policy ground that hadn’t seen much sun.

Asked about NASA, all voiced support, but Crist suggested privatizing elements of space exploration, and Rubio said that the most important thing Congress can provide to the organization is a guiding mission.

“There’s a reason why the Chinese are trying to get back to the moon, and it isn’t because they want to collect moon rocks. It’s because space is the high ground of national defense,” Rubio said. “We cannot lose our space superiority.”

The moderator also brought up the recent court decision invalidating, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” Crist and Meek supported the decision, while Rubio said that the policy should rest with military officials who are currently studying how the change would work.

They also sparred on hot-button issues such as the stimulus, Social Security, and illegal immigration.

Crist repeated his claim that a path-to-citizenship for illegals would bolster Social Security, and he took issue with Rubio for describing his stance as amnesty.

“Now, a pathway to citizenship, governor, is code for amnesty,” Rubio said. “Amensty is, first of all, unfair to immigrants who have entered this country legally. Second, it will destroy any chance we will ever have of having a legal immigration system that works.”

It is rhetoric like that, Crist would have voters believe, which drove La Gaceta to endorse him. But at the end of the editorial, the newspaper tips its hand and reveals that Rubio never really had a shot anyway.

“We must choose the candidate with the best chance of defeating Marc Rub, and we don’t believe that is Democrat Kendrick Meek. Our commitment to our cause is so great that we will buck our tradition of backing Democratic Senate candidates stretching back to 1922 and support Charlie Crist.”

La Gaceta describes Rubio as, “one dangerous hombre.” The reasoning is wrong, but the conclusion — that Rubio represents a potential GOP powerhouse — is spot-on. But for once-frontrunner Charlie Crist, now trailing by double digits, the paper’s warning came too late.