Reno campaign call: 'Protect government'

The current push to privatize is sapping its ability to meet social needs, she tells a Volusia crowd.

By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor
© St. Petersburg Times
published July 5, 2002

LAKE HELEN -- Basking in the patriotic trappings of small-town Florida, Janet Reno gave an Independence Day message including a call to arms on behalf of state government.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we must do something to protect our government," Reno, sporting a straw hat and red, white and blue scarf, told a politically diverse crowd celebrating July Fourth in rural Central Florida.

The Democratic gubernatorial candidate spent much of the day mingling with voters in western Volusia County and said state workers repeatedly fretted to her about shrinking state agencies, particularly social service agencies. Through budget cuts and privatization, she said, Florida's ability to meet the long-term needs of its citizens is endangered.

"We have got to maintain the ability of the heart of our government to be responsive when the private sector fails," she said, referring to state services such as child protection being contracted out to new profit-minded companies without track records.

The former U.S. attorney general never specifically mentioned Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, but her comments highlighted one of the most fundamental philosophical differences between the Republican governor and his Democratic challengers.

Bush touts his efforts to beef up social services but also boasts of shrinking the size of state government. Reno, Tampa lawyer Bill McBride and state Sen. Daryl Jones of Miami are hammering a consistent theme that Bush has been more interested in cutting corporate taxes than in investing in social services and schools.

"We would certainly welcome the opportunity to compare and contrast Gov. Bush's record of smaller, more efficient government with Janet Reno's big-government proposals," Bush campaign spokesman Todd Harris said.

Reno doubts most Floridians are cynical about government and believes they share her concerns about cutting it too thin. "I think there is a basic confidence people have in government, and it is heightened when they see the response to things like Sept. 11," she said at a later campaign stop in Ormond Beach.

July Fourth is a traditional day for politicking, and all the gubernatorial candidates spent it focused on the so-called I-4 corridor. This is the swath of battleground counties running from Daytona Beach to Tampa Bay; in it are concentrated the kind of moderate and independent-minded voters who often decide elections.

The governor held a campaign barbecue in Kissimmee near Disney World, McBride worked the July Fourth parade crowd in Brandon, and Reno hit Volusia County on the eastern edge of Interstate 4. The corridor is an area McBride is banking on winning in the September Democratic primary to offset Reno's strength in Democratic strongholds in South Florida.

Reno and Jones spent most of the day in Lake Helen, population 3,000, where folks couldn't recall seeing such a prominent politician as Reno before. The small-town backdrop, with beauty queens, waving flags, and barefoot kids slurping ice cream, was a fitting one for Reno's nostalgic campaign message.

As she does most everywhere, she recounted visiting Lake Helen as a kid, when her family toured Florida in a horse trailer equipped with bunk beds, a kerosene stove and a 50-gallon drum of water.

"I'm running for governor because I love this state with all my heart and soul," she said.

Thursday night, with fireworks exploding overhead and bemused residents looking on, she hopped into a conoe and paddled around Lake Helen.

Crowd reactions to Reno reflected the unpredictable nature of Volusia, which Jeb Bush won in 1998 and Al Gore won in 2000.

Republican retiree John Wimer waved cheerfully at Reno as she paraded amid the searing heat and said he admired her as "thoroughly honest." But he will vote for Bush enthusiastically. His Republican wife, Rachel Wimer, voted for Bush in 1998 but won't again, because "I don't like what he's done with our schools." Among the Democrats, she prefers McBride.

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