With early voting already taking place and less than a week to go until the primary elections, candidates across the Sunshine State are taking part in a time-honored tradition of Florida’s unique political culture -- and attacking each other.

Perhaps the most divisive gubernatorial battle in Florida’s history -- and certainly the most bloody -- took place in 1565 when Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the Spanish explorer who founded St. Augustine, took on French Huguenot Jean Ribault. Both men claimed to be governor of Florida. From his base at Fort Caroline on the St. Johns River in present day Jacksonville, Ribault launched an attack on St. Augustine, only to have his fleet destroyed by a sudden hurricane. Menendez led the Spanish to Fort Caroline and ran the French off. A few weeks later, Menendez found the shipwrecked Frenchmen and slaughtered most of them -- including his gubernatorial rival Ribault.

Leigh Read, a prominent Democrat in territorial Florida, killed Augustus Alston, one of the leading Whigs in the state, in a duel with rifles at 15 paces back in 1839. Read himself was killed by Alston’s brother Willis in 1840. Legend has it that Alston’s sisters removed the bullet from Augustus’ corpse so that Willis could kill Read with it. When Prohibition Party candidate Sidney Catts ran for governor back in 1916, he carried two pistols with him on the campaign trail -- and Catts was a minister.

Hardball politics did not enter the Sunshine State in the bitter contest between Claude Pepper and George Smathers for the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination in 1950 like so many people think. It’s always been a part of Florida’s unique political culture.

Certainly the cast of candidates running for office in 2010 lived up to that cultural tradition on Tuesday.

Health-care executive Rick Scott launched a new ad on Tuesday against Republican gubernatorial primary rival Attorney General Bill McCollum -- linking McCollum with disgraced former Republican Party of Florida Chairman Jim Greer.

Any sense of cordiality between the two campaigns has long since vanished and the new Scott commercial is no different, ripping into McCollum’s connections with Greer, who faces money laundering charges, in harsh terms.

“Who backed Jim Greer’s efforts to hide financial irregularities?” asks the narrator of the commercial. “Bill McCollum.”

“This ad frames the choice that Florida voters have a week from today,” said Jennifer Baker, a spokeswoman for Scott. “Rick Scott is a conservative outsider with business experience and a specific plan to bring jobs and prosperity to Florida. His opponent is a career politician and Tallahassee insider owned by special interests who is so out of touch with the people that he believes government should operate in secret so that deals can be cut. The only way to put an end to the politics-as-usual that have put Florida on the wrong path is to elect a conservative outsider who has a record of creating private-sector jobs. It’s time to clean house and shine a little sunshine back on state government.”

“Rick Scott’s latest ad is as fraudulent as the massive Medicare scam that took place on his watch as the disgraced former CEO of Columbia/HCA,” shot back Matt Williams, McCollum‘s campaign manager. “Considering Bill McCollum was the person responsible for referring the information to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that led to a criminal investigation and, ultimately, Jim Greer’s arrest, Floridians will see right through Rick Scott for the fraud that he is.

“The irony in Rick Scott’s latest ad is that he possesses many of the same character traits as disgraced former Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer,” added Williams. “Like Jim Greer, Rick Scott has been the subject of endless allegations of fraud and criminal acts.”