Multiple hurricanes recently crisscrossed central Florida. Now it's the season for White House Cabinet members and top aides to barnstorm the state.
Their appearances - doling out generous hurricane aid, job training grants, financial incentives, economic advice and a few plugs for their boss - are so frequent lately in the Tampa Bay area and elsewhere in Florida that their plentiful Secret Service agents are starting to get a tan.
Their visits and federal offerings to Florida and other swing states critical in this close presidential election have not gone unnoticed by the press. As long as there is some hint of official government business, these Cabinet-level trips - along with those by the president on Air Force One - are paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
But when the trips come too often - so close to the election - and with no compelling government reason, it's troubling. Campaigning for the boss is not what taxpayers want from senior administration officials.
The latest Cabinet member to join the conga line in Florida is Labor Secretary Elaine Chao. With Secret Service agents in tow, Chao on Wednesday briefly toured a Verizon training facility in east Tampa, spliced some fiber-optic cable for the cameras, and praised the company's new technology.
Then she unveiled $460,000 in Florida grants to encourage aerospace careers, part of a new national $3-million aerospace job training initiative.
What does aerospace job training have to do with Verizon? Nothing, though Verizon's facility at least is dedicated to new tech services. But it is in Florida. Chao, speaking to a small room comprised mostly of Verizon tech workers, said the aerospace grants are part of Bush's "high growth job training initiative."
In late September, Chao was in Orlando to announce nearly $4.9-million in similar grants to train workers for careers in the geospatial industry.
Bush's job training initiative might emphasize high growth, but the plan has been low profile. Major U.S. newspapers have rarely mentioned the initiative before this year. And the references to it in 2004 mostly record Chao's recent funding announcements of job training programs: here in Florida; in Michigan and Wisconsin for auto training; and in California for biotechnology jobs.
All but California are important swing states in the election.
In Florida, the Cabinet visits are coming fast and furious:
* Treasury Secretary John Snow stopped by the St. Petersburg Times last week after visiting a restaurant industry training program in Tampa and before giving a speech to Florida bankers in Orlando. That was his fifth trip to Florida this year. Of 43 trips Snow has taken to other states in 2004, 32 have been to swing states. That includes nine trips to Ohio, and five each to Pennsylvania and Missouri.
All of Snow's 19 trips in the past four months have included at least one stop in a battleground state, the Treasury Department confirms. Snow's office says his travels are strictly Treasury business. But it's a fuzzy line. Snow is known as the administration's ultimate optimist on the economy and a cheerleader for Bush's policies.
* Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham last week unveiled a $1.5-million grant in Largo for the Young-Rainey STAR Center, a Pinellas County high-tech business incubator. Last week, he announced a $235-million grant to help build a clean-burning power plant near Orlando that will create 1,800 jobs.
* Interior Secretary Gale Norton traveled to Minnesota this month to accept a donation of five power generators to aid Florida hurricane victims. She recently was in Florida to campaign alongside Republican Senate candidate Mel Martinez.
And in one more high-profile visit - Condoleezza Rice, the White House national security adviser - on Monday praised the president's foreign policy to a Jewish group in South Florida in remarks that Democrats argued were little more than a Bush re-election speech.
There are plenty other examples, but the pattern is pretty clear. In a presidential race that might hinge on a razor-thin victory in Florida, it sure helps to deploy a small army of senior administration officials sprinkling the state with generous gifts courtesy of the federal government.
- Times researcher Catherine Wos contributed to this column. Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com or 727 893-8405.
