Judging by primary, this could get ugly

MORGAN

© St. Petersburg Times
published September 7, 2002

If Tampa lawyer Bill McBride is able to defeat former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno on Tuesday, he should send a thank-you note to Gov. Jeb Bush.

Until the governor started running TV commercials denouncing McBride, few Floridians knew who he was.

But McBride still has to get past Reno, which could be a formidable task.

It was a strange strategy for a sitting governor, and McBride has taken full advantage by firing back with ads that suggest the governor is afraid of him.

This could be the start of something really bad.

So far the Democrats have been fairly nice to each other, saving their arrows for Bush. But no matter who wins on Tuesday, you can expect the campaign for governor and every other race on the ballot to get even more down and dirty.

Anonymous Web sites, shadowy committees that buy advertising and lots of ugly direct mail arriving in your mailbox.

Last week an anti-Jeb Bush Web site surfaced among the politically savvy in Tallahassee. (It's www.jeb02.com.) Besides making fun of Bush and his family, the site pokes a lot of fun at others.

One item, "McBride very mean to cute yellow Labrador puppy," suggests that McBride "heinously yelled at a defenseless puppy belonging to the child of a Holland & Knight employee."

Tucows Inc., the Toronto company that registered the Web site, lists the owner of the site as "3toehasyou" in New York and the administrative contact as "Rotten, Toe."

Efforts to locate 3Toe or Rotten Toe by the listed address and telephone number led nowhere. The address is fictitious, and the phone number leads to a gay male sex line that will charge you bunches of dollars if you dial it up and remain on the line.

But an e-mail to Rotten Toe Friday produced a response from Chris Price, a lifelong St. Petersburg resident who is the Web master for Eckerd College. He said he came up with the idea for Jeb02.com a few months ago.

Price, 26, is something of a satirist as well as a producer of Web sites. He also operates www.redtidenews.com, a Web site that makes fun of the Tampa Bay Bucs, and www.bentsports.com, another satirical sports site.

He acknowledges he is a Democrat, but says the inspiration for the political site came from hearing Michael Moore, author of Stupid White Men, at the University of South Florida.

"It's not so much about liking or not liking the governor," Price said Friday. "He's an obvious target for a satirist like myself."

Price says the 3Toe name is code he uses for registering all of his Web sites.

And he will not divulge the "source" of the story about McBride's yelling at the puppy.

Mysterious new political committees are forming to take advantage of a hole in the campaign finance law that allows them to buy ads supporting or denouncing candidates without accounting for who is supplying the money or where it is being spent.

Nobody is safe.

The groups will have fine-sounding names like "Committee to Protect Florida From Evil Doers" or "Mom and Apple Pie Inc.," but underneath they are all the same: special interests looking to elect or defeat friend or foe.

I know you'll find it hard to believe, but voters would be wise to discount a high percentage of the information you receive from sources you cannot readily identify, whether via the mail or on the Internet.

And by now you will be reaching for the off switch on your television to get away from all those commercials. Unfortunately, we have miles and miles to go before this is over.

It's enough to make me wonder if we should be voting for any of these people. If they are all as bad as their opponents say, we wouldn't want them.

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