Candidate's movie draws small audience
About 15 see a Tampa premiere of long shot Senate candidate Doug Gallagher's film, which portrays career politicians as drones.
By ANITA KUMAR
Published July 27, 2004
TAMPA - Republican Doug Gallagher brought his unusual U.S. Senate campaign to Tampa on Thursday by premiering a 15-minute movie depicting politicians as mindless drones.
Gallagher, who has never held political office, explains in the movie that he is not a lawyer or career politician but the kind of "fresh thinker" Washington needs. He cites Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger as examples.
But the event was far from a blockbuster. About 15 people attended the luncheon screening in a room set up for 50.
Many in the audience nodded their heads in agreement during the movie and when Gallagher spoke afterward.
"I like his stand on the issues," said Todd Devore, a manager of a printing company who will support Gallagher in the Aug. 31 primary. "I like the fact that he is not a career politician."
The movie shows actors portraying senators eating soup with forks, rowing in circles and walking through the rain holding closed umbrellas.
The movie, America How Great We Can Make It!, premiered Wednesday in Miami's Little Havana and will be shown in 15 Florida cities over two weeks.
J. Bruce Cumming Jr., a commercial real estate executive at Colliers Arnold in Tampa, said afterward he liked Gallagher's support of less government.
"I like the message," he said. "His message is more Reaganesque."
There was no popcorn, but each person was given a can of soup covered with a red label with the word "insanity" on it and a copy of the movie. The movie suggests government is run as if the people in charge were insane.
"We can't keep eating soup with a fork, we need to try a spoon," Gallagher says in the movie. "We need to elect fresh-thinking people, with bold fresh ideas to the Senate."
Gallagher, 55, a wealthy Miami software executive, has put more than $1-million of his own money into his long shot candidacy, and has said he will spend whatever it takes to match his better-known rivals on TV over the summer.
His TV ads, which aired for three weeks statewide, use images from the movie. TV ads are now airing in Orlando.
Gallagher, brother of Florida's Chief Financial Officer Tom Gallagher, faces seven other Republicans, including front-runners Bill McCollum, a former congressman from Longwood; Mel Martinez, President Bush's former housing secretary; and Johnnie Byrd, the state House speaker from Hillsborough County.