State: In midst of tax klatch, a defection

TALLAHASSEE -- Over coffee and Krispy Kreme doughnuts, eight senators huddled in Senate President John McKay's office Wednesday morning to tally votes for a plan to suspend tax breaks and give $1-billion in new money to education.

Though no one knew it at the time, the secret meeting could prove to be a turning point of the 2002 session, and perhaps a harbinger of the election campaign.

They sat around a large conference table and talked taxes: McKay and Republicans Lisa Carlton of Osprey, Jack Latvala of Palm Harbor, Tom Lee of Brandon, Ken Pruitt of Port St. Lucie, Don Sullivan of St. Petersburg and Jim King of Jacksonville and Democrat Ron Silver of North Miami.

McKay, seeking to shore up a tax plan the governor was trying to kill, went through a familiar routine, double-checking who was on board.

"The president said, "Let's go over the vote count again.' He just started going down the list," Pruitt recalled. When McKay got to King, the majority leader and next Senate president answered: "No, I just can't do this."

Stunned, McKay asked, "You're not? Why not?"

King reached into his pocket and slapped onto the table a copy of an editorial in Wednesday's Florida Times-Union. Headlined "The Engineer," the editorial was a sharply worded call to arms for King to exert his influence to stop a legislative "train wreck."

"It was as if the oxygen was sucked right out of the room," said Pruitt, who was sitting next to King. "It was one of the most intense meetings I've ever been involved in."

Moments later, King left the room. He said he wasn't comfortable sitting in on strategy session on an issue he did not support.

"I'm sorry, John," King said.

"I am too," McKay responded.

A few hours later, the Senate postponed debate on its own budget. McKay said it is now "improbable" that the session can end on time March 22.

The Senate will pass a budget that eliminates some tax breaks, McKay says. "Take it to the bank. We've got the votes," said McKay, who counts 14 of the 15 Democrats and at least seven Republicans, giving him the 21 he needs.

Jim King won't be one of them.

A lot of sleepless nights

It was 3 a.m. Wednesday, and King was wide awake.

He'd had a lot of sleepless nights over the past few weeks wrestling with the tax issue and his role as majority leader. But this time, he knew what he had to do.

A few hours later, as he was leaving for the Capitol, King learned by phone that one of his oldest and best friends, Bruce Malecot of St. Petersburg, was dead. He'd known for three weeks that Malecot had cancer but was crushed by how quickly he died.

Everything else in his life seemed trivial by comparison, said King's wife, Linda.

It strengthened his resolve.

King had little trouble voting for McKay's original proposal for a referendum to end nearly 100 sales tax exemptions and lower the sales tax rate to make up for the increased revenue. But a new proposal, to eliminate fewer exemptions and raise $1.1-billion, looked a lot like a tax increase. That's a sin to many Republicans, especially in an election year.

"All of us had opponents ready to use taxes against us," King said.

Last week, King hosted 300 Jacksonville-area constituents in Tallahassee for a day of meetings at the Capitol. Cynthia Burgin, a Republican state committeewoman for Duval County, accused McKay of making all of the state's Republicans look bad by insisting on his tax overhaul plan that neither Gov. Jeb Bush nor House Speaker Tom Feeney supported.

As opposition mounted, King thought of former state Rep. Sam Bell, who was poised to become speaker only to have a tax issue defeat him. And John Renke, a New Port Richey Republican defeated the year he was to become House minority leader.

"The old axiom is, don't get so caught up in what's going in Tallahassee that you lose your base at home," King said.

Late Saturday night, the phone rang. It was Bush.

"He said you've got to be strong and take leadership in this," King recalled. "But the governor has his own agenda. He told me he was working members."

That was odd, King thought: A sitting governor from the same political party as the Senate president lobbying senators to oppose their leader.

When King left the meeting with McKay Wednesday morning and returned to his office, he found a note in his chair urging him to call the governor as soon as possible. He reached Bush, who was on his way to the airport for a trip to Orlando.

As King talked to Bush, Latvala appeared in his office, having followed King from the meeting.

"I know Latvala feels I was in cahoots with the governor," King said, "but it wasn't true then and it isn't true now. I was making my move as a result of what could happen to me. This was not a takeover move."

King now wishes he had warned McKay before dropping the news in a meeting with other senators.

"I'm still upset with the fact I know I disappointed John McKay, and John McKay is an honorable, maybe even a noble leader," King said.

McKay refuses to criticize King or question his motives, other than to say that the opposition King cited likely was "orchestrated."

'The craziness of it all ...

About an hour after the meeting in McKay's office, King was called out of a committee room for a private discussion with the Senate president.

"I said, this isn't about you, it's about me and my district," King recalled. "That's when he got mad. I expected it. He said "You are cutting off my chances to negotiate when we were making headway.' "

King said some Senate Republicans have thanked him and remain supportive. "The craziness of it all is here we are, always opposed to taxes, and it was that we were stirring the pot and people who support us the most were mad," King said.

McKay insists he can pass "meaningful" tax reform without King. King's opposition is significant because he's the incoming Senate president. Senators eager to curry King's favor might close ranks around him rather than support a tax proposal backed by a lame duck Senate president.

Still, with two weeks remaining in the regular session, one man remains in charge of the Senate.

And it is not King.

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk