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ANITA KUMAR, DAVID KARP and CARRIE JOHNSONFirmly ahead of her Democratic Senate rivals, Betty Castor is already making plans for the general election.
TAMPA - As her opponents frantically criss-crossed the state Wednesday in the final days before the U.S. Senate primary, front-runner Betty Castor returned to Tampa with the confidence of a winner.
She has planned few public appearances in the coming days, won't travel much outside her home base of Tampa Bay and is spending more time raising money than wooing voters.
She's even scheduled fundraisers and trips to Washington and Philadelphia after the primary. Her goal: Raise $1-million a week for four weeks to arm herself for the Nov. 2 general election.
Tonight Castor faces her chief opponents, U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch of Hollywood and Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas, in the last statewide TV debate among the Democratic candidates.
As polls suggest undecided voters turning toward her, Castor's campaign sees a bandwagon effect under way.
"It's called winability," said Larry Biddle, Castor deputy campaign director. "The perception is we're going to win."
Potential donors who declined to give money before are now calling the Castor campaign to give. Her aides refused to predict victory, but the confidence is palpable in her Ybor City headquarters.
"There comes a point that there's not much more you can do," said Sam Bell, Castor's husband and a former legislator.
Deutsch, her chief rival, campaigned feverishly Wednesday, arriving in Orlando just before 2 a.m. and beginning his campaign day with an 8 a.m. breakfast after four hours of sleep.
He couldn't even slow down in his hotel room as he prepared for the day. He told supporters he was constantly clicking through TV stations, scanning for the latest campaign ads.
"I have not just talked the talk, I have walked the walk," he told a virtually all-black audience Tuesday at the Blue Collar Restaurant in Tallahassee, where a picture of Janet Reno hung on the wall.
Deutsch is focused on two core Democratic groups: blacks and Latinos.
In his trip to North Florida this week, many voters who saw Deutsch for the first time said they had only vaguely heard of him. Most knew Castor by name.
When Deutsch was introduced at a conference of black ministers in Tallahassee, the bishop could not pronounce his last name and didn't seem to know he was running for Senate.
Lawyer Ava Parker, who attended the conference, said she planned to vote for Castor, even though she is friends with one of Deutsch's key north Florida allies, state Sen. Al Lawson, D-Tallahassee.
"She gives you the feeling that you can trust her," Parker said of Castor.
Deutsch returned to South Florida on Wednesday to prepare for tonight's debate but has a full slate of public events through Monday, including a forum Friday on stem-cell research.
Castor has led every poll for the past year. A new Mason-Dixon poll to be released today shows Castor leading Deutsch 45 percent to 31 percent. Penelas had 9 percent, with 14 percent undecided.
"Nice to be the front-runner?" asked Kathy Fountain on her WTVT-TV Ch.13 call-in show Wednesday.
"Oh, it feels good to be the front-runner, yes," Castor said. At a Wednesday night event at the County Club of Ocala, Republican Senate candidate Mel Martinez all but declared Castor the winner of the Democratic primary.
"She won't be easy," he said. "She's going to be tough."
All three Democratic candidates agree the rest of the race depends on advertising. They are running TV ads statewide, and Castor and Deutsch have sent out direct mail appeals.
By Tuesday, Deutsch said, his campaign will have spent about $4-million on TV ads in every media market in Florida. Penelas said he plans to spend the rest of his money - about $850,000 - on TV and radio ads, a last-minute blitz to boost his name recognition outside his home base of Miami.
"I think there's a lot of votes there to be had," Penelas said, "people who just didn't know who Alex Penelas was."
Castor said she is fund-raising with an eye toward buying more ads in Miami.
Meanwhile, Penelas struggled for the time to campaign or raise money. He had planned to spend the morning at a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a park near AmericanAirlines Arena, the site of the upcoming MTV Video Music Awards. When that was abruptly canceled, his staff scheduled a swing through Orlando for a Latino Leadership Trailblazers' Roundtable luncheon.
But county business intervened, and that trip was scrapped. A trip to Arcadia to help at a distribution center for victims of Hurricane Charley also was put on hold.