By STEVE BOUSQUET and ANITA KUMAR
Published October 29, 2004
PORT ST. LUCIE - In a U.S. Senate race overshadowed by the battle for the White House, both candidates clutched coattails Thursday while one accused the other of impropriety.
First lady Laura Bush campaigned with Republican Mel Martinez at rallies in Sarasota, Port St. Lucie and St. Augustine, drawing crowds of about 2,000. Elizabeth Edwards, wife of Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards, joined Betty Castor in Lakeland, Casselberry and Gainesville, drawing crowds of about 200 at each.
As a college band played patriotic songs, a high school football stadium in Port St. Lucie was filled to capacity. Martinez played a supporting role, introducing Mrs. Bush and basking in her description of the former U.S. housing secretary and Cuban-American as a "really wonderful guy" with "a wonderful story."
Castor, meanwhile, emphasized her opposition to privatization of Social Security, which Martinez supports, and for more health care and deficit reduction. She also criticized what she called the negative slant of his campaign.
"He is running the most negative, untrue ads regarding my opinions on national security, the war in Iraq," Castor told a crowd in Lakeland. "I resent it. ... He's going to keep running the most negative ads, and I think that's a reason to vote against him."
But between remarks about issues, Castor also went on the attack.
Her campaign aides released documents they said show Martinez, while secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, authorized federal grants allowing adult assisted living centers to refurbish rooms with furniture from American of Martinsville, a Virginia subsidiary of the La-Z-Boy Corp. of Michigan. The furniture company was on a list of approved federal vendors.
In February, two months after leaving HUD, Martinez was named a director of La-Z-Boy, a post that pays him $28,000 a year plus stock options and $1,500 for each board meeting, according to financial disclosure statement.
Castor suggested the arrangement was improper.
"The issue now in my race is whether Mr. Martinez is capable of being an honest representative," Castor told a crowd in Gainesville. "Because I think the way you campaign says a lot about how you would perform in office."
Martinez called the accusation "totally baseless" and said: "Apparently, it's going to be a pattern, daily. There's going to be some outrageous charge after another that has absolutely no basis."
Asked if he took any actions at HUD that favored the furniture company, Martinez said: "Absolutely not. My service at HUD was honorable and beyond any question of ethics."
Martinez said a close friend who is a La-Z-Boy director, Rocque Lipford, suggested he be named to the company's board.
La-Z-Boy's corporate treasurer, Mark Stegeman, called it far-fetched to imply Martinez tried to benefit American of Martinsville. Stegeman said the "struggling" subsidiary does most of its business with hotels, not ALFs, and that it accounts for about 5 percent of La-Z-Boy's revenues.
Martinez stuck to a dominant theme of his campaign in the crucial final days: He supports President Bush on the war in Iraq and Castor does not. She said she would have opposed going to war had she known Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction.
"You'll have a senator that believes in that mission, not someone who does not believe in the mission that our troops are fighting for today," Martinez said.
With five days to go, two polls released Thursday showed the race a virtual dead heat.
