State: Novice waging a Cinderella campaign

WINTER HAVEN -- David Nelson's coat doesn't match his pants. His 1987 Nissan pickup broke down, so he rented a compact car from Budget. The back seat is jammed with campaign signs. In the front seat is his lunch: a fruit cup and a bag of plantain chips. He drove four hours Wednesday morning to talk for 15 minutes to about 100 people.

Nelson is the Democratic nominee for agriculture commissioner but can't afford television ads or a campaign bus. He folds his own fliers. He has raised about $20,000.

The 39-year-old political novice ought to be getting creamed by incumbent Charles Bronson, 52, a veteran Republican politician with more than $1-million at his disposal, TV ads galore and well-heeled friends, such as citrus magnate Ben Hill Griffin III, willing to lend him a corporate jet.

Instead, polls show they are in a dead heat.

To Nelson, a Miami middle school librarian who used to drive tractors and pick avocadoes in South Florida, his success vindicates his grass-roots style.

"I'm redefining Florida politics," Nelson said. "I'm a breath of fresh air."

Or maybe just lucky. Pollsters think voters are mistaking Nelson for U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla. Besides, in a race as obscure as this one, even the incumbent isn't well known (although like Nelson, he shares a famous name -- in his case, with an actor known for violent movies).

To understand how Nelson got here, start in his back yard.

Nelson used to have a pair of sour orange trees growing behind his Miami home. He does all the cooking for his wife, Cristina, and daughter, Amanda. He and Amanda often picked the fruit for cooking.

A couple of years ago, he came home from his job at South Miami Middle School and learned that he had been visited by one of the Agriculture Department's citrus canker eradication teams.

"My wife told me they cut down our two trees," Nelson said. "You just feel violated."

Soon, Nelson had an idea that gave direction to his anger. "He said, "I've got something to tell you: I'm going to run for commissioner of agriculture. Don't tell anybody,' " recalled Dorothy Rasmussen, who used to share an office with Nelson and has donated $100 to his campaign.

Since January, Nelson has been hitting produce festivals and fairs in driving distance of his house to shake hands. Since school began in August, though, he has mostly campaigned only at night and on weekends.

"My mortgage company doesn't understand when I'm not working," he explains.

Nelson's improbable candidacy has been embraced by opponents of the controversial canker eradication program, which has cut down 600,000 backyard trees trying to halt the canker's spread before it ruins the $9-billion citrus industry.

The department's determination to chop down healthy trees within a 1,900-foot radius of any sign of infection has outraged South Florida homeowners, who have so far won every court challenge.

"More than 250,000 people have already lost their trees," said Jack Haire, a leader in the canker rebellion. "That's a lot of voters."

To people like Haire, Nelson's sour orange experience and his lack of any previous political involvement make him ideally suited to replace a professional politician they say is a puppet of citrus growers.

"Can anybody do a worse job than Bronson?" asked Haire, who two weeks ago joined state Democratic Party finance chairman Mitchell Berger, and state Rep. Ken Gottlieb, D-Miramar, in sponsoring a Nelson fundraiser.

Although Nelson plays up the canker issue -- one news release dubs Bronson "Chainsaw Charlie" -- it is not the only plank in his platform. In his speech Wednesday to about 100 State Farm employees at the company's Winter Haven headquarters, he led off with a call for "a sensible citrus canker eradication policy." But he never mentioned his trees and quickly moved on to slamming Bronson's environmental record while a state senator.

Bronson's own supporters in the citrus industry helped Nelson beat two more experienced candidates in the primary. They feared one of Nelson's rivals, well-known environmental activist Mary Barley, would beat Bronson and end the canker eradication program.

So they formed a group called Florida's Working Families, financed in part by Griffin, that ran TV ads blasting Barley and touting Nelson -- at that point the only candidate not openly critical of Bronson. Nelson cruised to victory and began attacking Bronson on the canker issue.

Now Bronson is running ads attacking Nelson for lacking experience and being a mere librarian, contrasted with scenes of the millionaire Bronson on horseback. Bronson has also launched a bus tour of county fairs and football games, hoping to connect with voters who might believe he's the star of Death Wish.

At a news conference this week Bronson conceded that the canker issue "is giving me some trouble in South Florida," adding that, "The fact that a circuit judge says it's junk science is a problem, but we are appealing that decision." He nevertheless vowed to stand by his department's policy.

This is Bronson's third bid to head the agency. The Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, with 3,500 employees, promotes farming but also regulate dance studios, gas stations and telemarketers.

The commissioner also is a member of the Florida Cabinet, voting on a variety of statewide issues. The position pays $119,414 a year -- which would be a nice pay raise for Nelson, whose teacher salary is about $39,000 a year.

Bronson lost two previous campaigns for the agriculture post to entrenched Democratic incumbents, but won a state Senate seat. Finally, when one of those Democrats quit last year to take a job with the Florida Citrus Commission, Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Bronson to the post.

In a way, Bronson has had an easy time of it this year. When he showed up at a Jacksonville Tiger Bay Club meeting to debate his opponent, Bronson discovered Nelson had sent his dad to read a statement and then sit down. So far Bronson and Nelson have not met.

Twelve Florida newspapers have endorsed Bronson, partly because Nelson declined to meet with editorial writers. He figured he would be wasting his time. Yet Nelson was endorsed this week by the Orlando Sentinel -- Bronson's hometown paper.

No matter what happens Tuesday, Nelson says he has given students at his school a new interest in state elections.

"The social studies teachers are doing mock elections, and so there are students that are portraying me in the classrooms," he said. "Kids are coming up to me and saying, "Oh, I was you and everybody voted for you.' "

-- Times staff writer Lucy Morgan and researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this story.

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