State: McBride's first campaign was bittersweet

GAINESVILLE -- The campaign was as heated and close as anyone could remember. It ended in a virtual tie amid confusion, anguish and allegations of irregularities.

Al Gore? Butterfly ballots? Try 1968 and an ambitious law student named Bill McBride, whose first taste of politics brought him the rush of victory before the taint of political scandal yanked it away.

Now a Democrat running to unseat Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, McBride is often described as a political neophyte running his first campaign. But plenty of University of Florida alumni from those days recall McBride's campaign for student body president as a bizarre chapter in Gator politics.

The 23-year-old McBride narrowly won the election. But allegations of election violations prompted the student honor court to order a new election. Nobody accused McBride of personally doing anything wrong, but his narrow victory turned to defeat in a second election.

The eventual winner, Clyde Taylor, never ran for office again but wound up having an influence on Tallahassee politics: Until a few years ago, he co-owned Clyde's & Costello's, a smoky bar where politicos and lobbyists regularly converge.

Trying to glean insight from someone's college activities can be a dubious exercise. By most accounts, McBride exuded traits shared by other major gubernatorial candidates this year: ambition, thin skin and a certitude that he's the best candidate.

For McBride, the election was a harsh introduction to politics. "It was quite an experience," he said. "I think I learned a lot about how you can't take these things personally."

The next year, McBride enlisted in the Marines, eventually becoming a combat-decorated captain.

The campaign had a big impact on him, McBride's friends say. "It was a devastating blow. . . . He was a big man on campus who until then had been hugely successful at everything he'd done," said Steve Uhlfelder, a campaign adviser to McBride in 1968 who later became a chairman of the Florida Board of Regents and worked as a law partner with McBride. Uhlfelder is supporting Jeb Bush's re-election this year.

In the late 1960s, it seemed all roads to the Governor's Mansion ran through the University of Florida. Some of the players in the McBride-Taylor campaign wound up in Congress, the Legislature or the federal bench -- and at least one (McBride student campaign adviser-turned Key West City Attorney Manny James) in prison for smuggling drugs.

Students took their politics seriously. They spent big money, relied on political advisers, organized around student political parties and didn't hesitate to play rough.

There were power outages to prevent opponents from printing brochures. Fraternities ripped down campaign banners. McBride's political party promised a beer blast to the sorority or fraternity that turned out the most McBride votes.

"We're talking about a time when -- how should I put this? -- ethics were not exactly a priority in university politics," recalled Ernie Litz, who chronicled the election and Gator politics in the book Beer for Breakfast.

While many students across the country were protesting the Vietnam War, McBride and Taylor talked mostly about parking, access to football game tickets and coordination of social events.

They were clean-cut fraternity boys and members of the prestigious Florida Blue Key leadership society. Taylor was less the establishment candidate because he was more aligned with an independent student body president.

Taylor also had the backing of the student newspaper, the Florida Alligator. Its editorials pounded McBride, calling him a puppet of machine politicians and accusing him of ducking debates.

Steve Hull, the Alligator's editor at the time and now a Tallahassee lobbyist, recalled McBride's trying to pull him out of class to denounce an editorial.

Taylor recently recounted with a chuckle how he and his supporters relished the paper's McBride-bashing. He also recalled McBride as a so-so stump speaker who would boast about his campaign work for a young state lawmaker named Lawton Chiles.

"I remember listening to him and thinking, "Who the heck cares if somebody has worked for some politician?' " said Taylor, a criminal defense attorney.

A miniscandal erupted when an anonymous flier accused the Alligator and Taylor's political party of colluding to install Hull in Blue Key. Bill McCollum, president of Blue Key and a nonpartisan in the election, loudly denounced and denied the flier's claims with much the same earnestness that he later denounced Bill Clinton when McCollum was a member of Congress.

A light turnout gave McBride the election by eight votes out of 6,400 cast.

Complaints arose about problems with ballot-counting machines, voters turned away from polls and people campaigning too close to voting areas. A new election was ordered.

Taylor, like others closely involved in that campaign, said McBride did nothing wrong.

"He wouldn't have had any idea what was going on, any more than I would if my people were out doing something," he said.

McBride didn't help himself by sounding less than humble after squeaking to victory. "We are the greatest," McBride reportedly declared.

"There was an implication that he was prematurely celebrating a victory that was still in doubt," recalled John Cosgrove, who later became a Democratic legislator and candidate for insurance commissioner.

The second time around, 11,000 voters turned out, and Taylor won by 1,100 votes.

It took 34 years for McBride to become a candidate again, and this time he'll have to rely on a lot more than fraternity pledges to get past a former U.S. attorney general and a brother of the president.

But this year he will get Clyde Taylor's vote.

"Tell him I said hello," Taylor said. "And tell him this time I hope we don't have to do it over again."

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Lucy Morgan

From the Times state desk