While the toxic algae blooms currently effecting both southeast and southwest Florida have been all the political talk in the respective state and congressional districts most affected, there is now a political oil slick that has permeated the white sand beaches of Florida’s 19th congressional district.

While Republican congressional candidates, former Ambassador Francis Rooney, City Councilman Chauncey Goss, and Dan Bonging, are all too quick to try to win over voters by declaring that they are the “Mr. Clean Water” in their race, Goss and Rooney have taking aim at one another’s current and past support for offshore oil exploration.

First of all, both Goss and Rooney have a considerable amount of their personal and family wealth invested in the oil industry.

According to his most recent financial disclosure form, Goss and his family have anywhere between $17,000 and $80,000 invested in oil, gas and drilling companies that operate and make a buck off drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

Goss has investments in Chevron Corp, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Hercules Offshore, and Magnum Hunter Resources Corp.

Like Goss, Francis Rooney has also invested in ExxonMobil, but his portfolio is significantly larger considering that he and his family have deeper pockets, and from the little fact that Rooney also sits on the board of Helmerich & Payne, Inc., an offshore oil drilling company.

Rooney’s current financial disclosure states that he has six deferred compensation and stock options accounts with H&I that all range between $1 and $1million each, not to mention having quite a few other energy company investments to boot.

A few days back, southwest Florida residents began receiving a push poll live telephone call from what was believed by some to be a call conducted by the Francis Rooney for Congress campaign.

Like I said, the push poll used a live caller. The caller specifically asked to speak to the female of the household, but when the survey was concluded, no disclaimer was mentioned, raising doubt that Rooney had anything to do with the call.

The caller asked these two questions:

If you knew Chauncey Goss supported off shore drilling and made millions of dollars from it, would you support him?

If you knew Chauncey Goss worked a deal in DC to make off shore drilling easier, would you support him?

While Team Rooney denies making or having any knowledge of this call, which was most likely carried out by some anonymous special interest group, Goss took to Facebook and used the opportunity to attack Rooney’s oil investments.

Why not attack an political opponent? This is American politics, right? It’s all good.

Here is what Goss posted:

Our campaign has been getting attacked by a shadow group making telephone calls tying my name with Francis Rooney’s oil connections. They are trying to mislead voters. Here are the facts:

Francis Rooney is on the Board of Directors of two oil companies including an OFFSHORE OIL COMPANY with rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.

Apparently he makes upwards of $1.62 MILLION (including $213,678 every year in salary) helping lead this company with a vested interest in expanding drilling in our Gulf of Mexico. This isn’t just stock he owns, where he has no control over what the company does, he’s leading the company.

He’s also on the board of directors of a second oil drilling company, where he makes upwards of another $1.06 MILLION (including $232,500 every year in salary) leading and guiding this company.

In addition to being on the these boards, he owns upwards of $167,000 in other oil and energy stocks for a total of $2.8 million in oil and energy interests.

Remember, Goss also owns stock in offshore oil drilling companies, just not as much as Rooney.

In addition to the push poll, it appears as if an overzealous Rooney supporter, who was privy to what appears to be opposition research conducted against Goss, had decided to copy and paste this data and share it with friends and other Rooney supporters.

The data compiled against Goss highlights his oil investments, as well as crediting Goss for penning “The Ryan Budget” of 2012, alleges that the plan “promotes an end to current de facto bans on offshore drilling in the Atlantic, Alaska, and the eastern Gulf of Mexico.”

Polling by independent groups or companies in this congressional district has not existed, so could internal campaign polling be driving these campaigns to turn on each other?

Internal polls may show that Rooney does not garner the support he would like leading up to election day, and that is why groups and individuals outside of the campaign are going to bat for him. By Goss, who acknowledges that the push poll conducted against him was by a “shadow group,” attacking Rooney, it could signal to voters that his campaign could also be lagging a bit.

Again, we are in the home stretch of the political primary season, and as we saw back in the Republican presidential primary race between Trump, Rubio, Cruz and others, any goes.

Expect more political shenanigans to take place in this congressional race over the next couple of weeks leading to the August 30th primary election.