A hotly contested Senate race is the focus of our Reality Check this week as part of our Vote 2012 coverage.

Incumbent Democrat Sen. Bill Nelson has gone on the attack against his opponent, Connie Mack IV.

Mack won the Republican nomination in August's primary.

Dr. Rick Foglesong reviews the issue.

So why is this race between Nelson and Mack so important? Because it's not just about which man will represent Florida in Washington -- it's about which party will control the Senate and, ultimately, the nation's capital.

As background for this reality check, the Democrats control the Senate 53-47, so Republicans need four more seats to take charge.

Nationwide, there are nine tossup Senate elections in which either party could win, six with a Democratic incumbent Nelson one of them, making his seat a must-win pretty much for either party.

In an ad, Nelson seeks to introduce Mack to voters on his, that is, Nelson's terms.

The claim that Mack worked as a promoter for Hooters is mostly true, depending on what one means by promoter. Stated more precisely, he worked as a marketing executive from 1994-2000 for a company that owned restaurants, including several Hooters.

The statement that Mack has a history of barroom brawling and road rage is true. These incidents include an altercation with baseball player Ron Gant at an Atlanta sports bar, which was the subject of a lawsuit. But none of this history is recent; the last incident was in 1992.

The assertion that Mack had a trail of debts and liens is partly true -- I say "partly" because these debts and liens occurred in a concentrated time period, coinciding with Mack's divorce from his first wife, Ann, soon after his election to Congress.

And yes, his attendance record in Congress has been sub-par. Over four terms in the House, he missed 6 percent of the recorded votes, more than twice the median for House members, but in the past year, while he was campaigning for Senate, he failed to vote 29 percent of the time, earning the House's seventh-worst voting record.

So overall, I rate this ad mostly true.

This race is critical, so I expect to do reality checks on future ads from both campaigns.

We've heard so much about Missouri GOP Senate Candidate Todd Akin's statements regarding abortion.

Will that controversy affect this race? It could. If Akin stays in his race and the Republican establishment withdraws his funding that could mean more money spent on Mack's behalf.