Question: When is a voucher not a voucher?

Answer: When you're a Democratic candidate for attorney general and you voted for one of the education legacies of Republican Gov. Jeb Bush.

In the kickoff debate of the attorney general race on Sunday, state Sen. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach pointed to two key votes that set him apart from rival state Sen. Dave Aronberg of Greenacres. One was Aronberg's vote for ``vouchers.''

Tossing out the politically charged word in a room full of liberal Democrats was like waxing poetic about ACORN in front of a bunch of Republican conservatives. Aronberg was indignant.

``I've never had a Democrat distort my record,'' he said. ``I have never voted for a voucher.''

Except that he did. Aronberg voted for legislation tweaking one of Bush's signature voucher programs, which awards income tax credits to corporations that give private school scholarships to poor kids. This amounts to as much as $118 million in tax dollars that otherwise would be going into the state treasury and, critics charge, could be spent on public education. The 2009 bill allowed insurance companies to participate in the program, increasing the pool of donors and potentially allowing more kids to get scholarships.

``We call these corporate vouchers, and we have had difficulties with them,'' said Mark Pudlow, a spokesman for the statewide teachers' union, the Florida Education Association. ``Helping poor kids is a good idea, but we think we ought to try to help all the kids in struggling schools, and we think this takes away from the public schools' ability to do it.''

Aronberg remained steadfast Friday, saying he has ``never voted for a bill that created vouchers or expanded the voucher program.'' It's true that the 2001 legislation creating the program predates Aronberg's arrival in the Senate. And it's true that in 2008, he voted against legislation that increased the available tax credits from $88 million to $118 million. The 2009 bill did not raise the $118 million cap.

Gelber, who got the union's ``Champion of Education'' award Friday, suggested Aronberg was making a distinction without a difference.

``He voted for the program and I voted against it. It couldn't be clearer,'' he said. ``I want to fix public education, not privatize it.''

It was hard to see the issue in such stark terms at Friday's rally celebrating the voucher program at Mt. Bethel Christian Academy in Fort Lauderdale. Hundreds of children in matching white T-shirts, mostly black and Hispanic, all poor, packed the chapel. They heard from Antonio Trigo, who once struggled at Parkway Middle School in Miami Gardens, which has earned Ds and Cs from the state. His grandmother applied for him to get a scholarship to attend Mt. Olivet Seventh-Day Adventist School in Fort Lauderdale, where he was valedictorian of his eighth grade class in the spring. He is now in ninth grade at Miami Union Academy.

``Before I received the scholarship, I was going nowhere,'' said Trigo. ``It got to the point where I didn't want to go to school at all, and I didn't care about my future.''

Kids like Trigo are the reason why the Democratic Party's opposition to vouchers has weakened over the years. The most controversial parts of Bush's voucher program were struck down by the Florida Supreme Court. Aronberg was among four Senate Democrats who voted for the voucher bill this year.

The Rev. H.K. Matthews, a civil rights pioneer who spoke at the rally, said, ``Our children shouldn't have to fight an uphill battle just to learn what has been promised by our Constition and our God.''

Beth Reinhard is the political writer for The Miami Herald

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