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Bush, McBride turn to big guns for help
By ADAM C. SMITH, STEVE BOUSQUET and WES ALLISON
With the governor's re-election no longer the sure thing it once seemed, President Bush flew into Florida on Thursday to help his younger brother. It was the latest reminder of the intense national interest in who will control the Governor's Mansion in America's biggest battleground state. McBride also is turning to some big guns for help, heading north Thursday evening for a series of fundraisers expected to raise more than $500,000 for the state Democratic Party. Today he joins Bill and Hillary Clinton for a private fundraiser in Connecticut. But even as he jumps on the opportunity to raise badly needed campaign money, the Tampa lawyer is working hard to avoid casting the governor's race as a referendum on the popular president or revenge for the contested presidential election of 2000. "I'm very supportive, as everyone should be, of the commander in chief," McBride told a Danish TV reporter who recently quizzed him about the president. "This shouldn't be a referendum on the president. This is a Florida election. This should be about Florida public schools, this should be about senior citizens in Florida. To make it about anything more than that, I don't think is right." On CNN's Inside Politics Thursday, McBride demurred when asked whether lingering resentment over the 2000 election is a big factor. "I hope not very much," he said. "Frankly, what this needs to be is an election about the future." Like it or not, though, the race has big national implications, as the president showed Thursday with his 11th Florida visit since becoming president. Two years ago, George W. Bush needed his brother's help to win Florida and the White House. Now, it's Jeb Bush who needs the president's help to hold on to the Governor's Mansion. In Volusia County, a swing voter haven on the eastern end of the crucial I-4 corridor, the Bush brothers went to an elementary school to talk up the centerpiece issue in the governor's race -- improving schools. The president was a forceful spokesman for his brother's education policies, including using standardized tests to grade schools and increase accountability at schools. "The passion and vision I describe is shared by your governor. I know him well," the president said, as his brother looked up at him admiringly from his seat to the right of the president. "I know his heart. I know his strength of conviction, and I know his vision." Officially, it was a nonpolitical event. McBride was never mentioned, and campaign signs and buttons were barred from the Read-Pattillo Elementary School, which has risen from a C to an A under the governor's school-grading system. McBride is an ardent critic of the governor's emphasis on standardized tests on which those grades are based, so the political overtones were inevitable. " "You test too much,' they say. "You're teaching the test,' " President Bush said, his voice rising. "If you teach a child to read, you're teaching a child a skill, not teaching the test." Gov. Bush introduced his brother, saying a love of reading runs in the first family. "This is my passion. I think it's genetically been transferred generation to generation," he said. Other Bush family members are also helping the governor. Recorded phone calls from Barbara Bush started hitting Florida homes this week, urging people to vote absentee for Gov. Bush. "George and I are very proud of what Jeb has accomplished as governor, but we know there is much more he wants to do for all Floridians," says the former first lady. The Bush brothers also attended a $25,000-a-person fundraiser Thursday at the waterfront Daytona Beach home of Dr. Bruce Kennedy and Lesa France Kennedy. Dr. Kennedy is a surgeon and his wife is a top executive of International Speedway Corp., the company that runs Daytona International Speedway. She is the granddaughter of NASCAR founder Bill France. The fundraiser was expected to raise $1-million for the state GOP, which is largely funding the Bush campaign. While national Democrats are salivating at the prospect of beating the president's brother, McBride is determined to avoid any distractions from his message that Gov. Bush has failed to improve Florida's public schools. He's avoiding high-profile appearances with potentially polarizing Democrats. Though he allows reporters into most of his Florida fundraisers, the Connecticut fundraiser with the Clintons is closed. Hillary Clinton will be in South Florida on Saturday, but McBride won't be there, just as he opted not to join Al Gore when he recently visited Florida. He will, however, join U.S. Sens. Joseph Lieberman and Bob Graham in Broward County on Sunday. U.S. Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., expects to be in the Tampa Bay area Oct. 29 campaigning for U.S. Rep. Karen Thurman, but McBride has not yet committed to that event. U.S. Sen. John Kerry wants to campaign with McBride before Election Day, but nothing firm has been set. While McBride raises money out of state, U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut today will be in Orlando stressing the need for strong a Democratic turnout in Florida. Other candidates might crave national figures to help generate attention, but McBride no longer needs that. "I can't think of another race in the country, and that's not hyperbole, where the candidates . . . haven't just begged for the national luminaries to come in and raise money fo them," said Bob Poe, Florida Democratic Party chairman. "Bill McBride is running his own campaign. He's very disciplined." McBride is hardly turning away financial help. His Washington, D.C., fundraiser Thursday night was hosted by Elizabeth Bagley, President Clinton's ambassador to Portugal, and her husband, Smith Bagley, an heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune. They are prominent Democratic fundraisers, who have fought to end the trade embargo against Cuba and hosted Elian Gonzalez and his father after federal agents seized the boy from his relatives' Miami home. McBride supports the trade embargo.
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From the Times state desk
From the state wire
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