University of South Florida political science professor Susan MacManus says the Tampa Bay area has voted like Florida does 100 percent of the time since 1980.
MacManus told the Tallahassee Tiger Bay Club recently that candidates are discovering that the Interstate 4 corridor is even hotter this year than in past elections. About half of the 500,000 new voters who have registered since 2000 live in the corridor and are increasingly registering as independents.
Independents now account for 20 percent of Florida voters and no one is certain how to reach them, MacManus said.
She expects terrorism to remain a hot issue in the presidential election this year and says younger voters are more affected by the terrorist attacks than older ones.
Maybe Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell just don't have much juice in Florida. A former state GOP field director complains that the state party and Bush-Cheney campaign are effectively writing off African-American voters in Florida's presidential race. The campaign target? A meager 7 percent of the black vote, about what exit polls showed President Bush winning in 2000.
So says former state party field director Nadia Naffe of Tampa, who was fired from the party last week after she filed a federal discrimination complaint claiming the state GOP "degraded" and "humiliated" her.
A party spokesman called her allegations "beyond ludicrous." Bush-Cheney spokesman Reed Dickens dismissed her contention that the campaign was only targeting 7 percent of the black vote. He would not discuss specific goals but said the campaign is aiming to increase its share of every demographic group.
If a candidate only meets privately with campaign contributors, does it really qualify as a visit? The question arose last week after the John Kerry campaign, responding to Bush-Cheney campaign chairman Marc Racicot formally opening the president's campaign office in Tallahassee, touted the attention Kerry has paid to Florida. The Massachusetts senator has visited Florida 13 times since January 2003, the campaign crowed.
It neglected to mention, though, that the vast majority of those visits were for private fundraisers. For those keeping count, President Bush has visited 20 times since becoming president, mixing public events with private fundraisers.
Kerry and his wife, Teresa, return to the Sunshine State April 19 and 20 for $1,000- and $2,000- per person fundraisers in Palm Beach, Daytona Beach, Jacksonville, Tallahassee, Tampa (lunch on April 20 at the Wyndham Westshore) and Miami. With Betty Castor handily leading in the polls for the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch of Broward County is telling everyone who will listen that voters barely know the candidates yet and that he's the most likely nominee. Agreeing with him, says Deutsch, is one of the country's savviest Democrats: Bill Clinton.
Deutsch says he talked to the former president recently, and "At the end of 20 minutes he said, "I think you're going to win.' "
- Times Staff Writer Lucy Morgan and Political Editor Adam C. Smith contributed to the Buzz.
