Earlier this month, I noted that [Republican] Bill McCollum began the year with a decisive double-digit lead over [Democrat] Alex Sink for governor of Florida.

Considering how Florida’s been hit with a severe housing bust, unemployment stands at 11.8 percent, and things probably aren’t going to be too much better in November, the Democrats may have picked the wrong year to nominate a bank executive who oversaw thousands of layoffs.

There are a lot of ways Sink could try to defend against this line of criticism from the Republican Governors Association — “it was ten years ago”; “the layoffs were necessary to the survival of the company” – but I’m not sure how well most of them will play in this political environment.