Clinton to join race's final push

President Bush will rally for his brother for the 12th time in Florida. In the final stretch, both candidates pull out all the stops to get voters to vote.

By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor
© St. Petersburg Times
published October 31, 2002

JACKSONVILLE -- Hoping huge voter turnout can push him past Jeb Bush , Bill McBride is turning to the biggest Democratic celebrity for help.

Former President Bill Clinton will campaign with McBride in South Florida this weekend to fire up Florida's most committed Democrats.

"He's coming to encourage voter turnout," McBride said Wednesday afternoon.

The former president will be in the state the same day as the man who replaced him.

President Bush will fly to Tampa on Saturday for an evening rally at the USF Sun Dome, his 12th trip to stand beside his brother in Florida.

For McBride, it's a change of strategy. He had kept his distance from some national Democratic heavyweights, including Al Gore, fearing they might antagonize swing voters in Central and North Florida. Now the party is talking to Gore about making an appearance, too.

But with polls showing McBride trailing Bush in the final week, his campaign is doing all it can to encourage turnout in Democratic strongholds -- including touting its own poll showing the race too close to call.

"If it's a low voter turnout, the current governor will be re-elected. If it's a big turnout, we win," McBride told supporters Wednesday in Jacksonville. "More Floridians are on the same side of the issues as I am, and I want a big turnout from Pensacola to Jacksonville to Key West."

Slick 30-second TV spots drive the campaigns, but in a divided state like Florida, get-out-the-vote efforts can be decisive in a tight race. Big events with the likes of Clinton or George W. Bush can fire up voters, and grass-roots operations can ensure they vote.

It's why recorded messages from the likes of Barbara Bush and Clinton are hitting answering machines across the state. It's why voters who told Republican phone-bankers they were undecided recently received personal notes from the governor:

"Dear Nancy, I heard you received a call regarding the campaign. I would love to have your vote on Nov. 5."

It's why Joan Joseph, a McBride worker in Palm Beach County, was buzzing in her cell phone the other day about "flushing" and "pushing and pulling." She wants the operation to flush voters out of their homes and to the polls. Phone calls and door-knocking are supposed to push people to vote, while in Palm Beach County 15-passenger vans -- 15 of them -- will pull voters to the polls.

Republicans have long enjoyed an overwhelming money advantage that enables them to mail millions of absentee ballot applications to put votes in the bank early. But Democrats can offset that with a stronger grass-roots campaign to get people to the polls.

In 2000, they blew away Republican predictions for Democratic turnout, especially among African-Americans. Roughly 10 percent of Florida's 9.3-million registered voters are black, but that year they made up 15 percent of the vote.

At an African-American church in Jacksonville on Wednesday, McBride cited a new internal poll showing him 3 percentage points behind Bush. He suggested black voter turnout comparable to 2000 would win the race for him.

A new Mason-Dixon poll released Monday found McBride trailing Bush by 8 points. Still, as the president's latest visit shows, the governor is taking nothing for granted.

"Democrats are good at turnout. We learned that the last couple of elections," Bush said recently. "But put it this way: We've elevated our game."

Indeed, Republicans carefully studied the Democratic playbook from 2000, which included the national party sending paid staffers into individual neighborhoods for weeks to drive up turnout. This year, Republicans are targeting direct mail more precisely, such as to women and Jewish voters. They also are committing more money to the ground war.

"We're going to have more phone calls than have ever been made before, more mail pieces than we've ever had before, more people working the polls than we've ever had before," said state GOP chairman Al Cardenas. "The 2000 election was a wonderful case study for us, and we learned from it."

But Bush has dramatically outspent McBride on TV ads, and on Wednesday he launched two new ones, one touting his environmental record and the other attacking McBride's spending plans.

Florida Democrats have an easier job mobilizing turnout because Democrats are more concentrated, particularly in southeast Florida. But turnout is much more crucial to them.

Lawton Chiles narrowly beat Jeb Bush in 1994, when 66 percent of Florida voters went to the polls. Four years later, Bush won only slightly more votes but handily beat Democrat Buddy MacKay because only 49 percent of Florida voters turned out.

Both sides are urging voters to cast their ballots before election day to avoid long lines.

The Democratic National Committee, concerned about inadequate get-out-the-vote efforts in Florida, recently committed an extra $500,000.

McBride needs especially strong turnout in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties, which could account for well over half his votes. Janet Reno, who narrowly lost to McBride in the primary and overwhelmingly won those counties, is campaigning hard for him there.

South Florida Democrats hope lingering bitterness over the 2000 elections will rouse voters. Even tuning up the elections system to reduce miscast ballots could help McBride because most rejected ballots in 2000 were from Democrats.

"Clearing up voting problems changes the election 1 or 2 points without there being any difference in turnout," said Democratic pollster David Beattie.

At an African Methodist Episcopal church conference in Jacksonville, Bishop John Hurst Adams described George W. Bush as president "by edict of the United State Supreme Court. . . . He's going to have a regime change in Baghdad, and he's going to do it with bullets. We're going to have a regime change in Tallahassee, and we're going to do it with ballots."

-- Times staff writer Steve Bousquet contributed to this report.

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