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Fla. politics keep 'em guessing up North

By PHILIP GAILEY
Published February 5, 2006

When I hear from friends inside the Washington Beltway, I can count on two questions: (1) Does Katherine Harris have a shot at winning the U.S. Senate race; (2) Is Jeb Bush going to run for president in 2008?

I can't resist having a little fun at the expense of their mental health. When I answer "yes" to both questions, there is usually a pause followed by a few expletives before I tell them I was just kidding. More than five years after Florida's disputed presidential vote, some of my liberal friends are still having nightmares. They have the same visceral reaction to Katherine Harris - the villain of Florida's 2000 political drama - that they do to the mere mention of George W. Bush's name.

Anything, of course, can happen in politics, and I have an embarrassing record when it comes to predicting election outcomes. But I cannot imagine Katherine Harris going to the Senate this year or Jeb Bush succeeding his brother in the White House. Bush has said repeatedly - and I believe him - that he has no intention of running for president in 2008. He is simply being realistic. He knows that at the end of his brother's polarizing presidency, the last thing many voters will want to see on a presidential ballot is the name Bush.

Harris appears less realistic in challenging Sen. Bill Nelson, the Democratic incumbent. She has no serious opponent in the Republican primary, but she is the decided underdog against Nelson, who has a commanding lead in the polls (24 percent) and in fundraising (more than $6.5-million in the bank compared to less than $500,000 for Harris). One sign that Nelson is confident of re-election is that he voted against the Supreme Court nomination of Justice Samuel Alito.

Harris is giving up her seat in the U.S. House of Representatives to make her Senate bid, and she did so against the wishes of the governor and the White House, not to mention the Republican Party hierarchy in Florida. When they failed to talk her out of the race, they unsuccessfully tried to recruit a challenger for the primary. Some Republicans fear that Harris' candidacy could even hurt the party's chance of holding on to the governorship this year. After all, what kind of Democrat would stay home and miss an opportunity to vote against Katherine Harris, who was cast as the Cruella DeVil of Florida's nasty 2000 election debacle?

As secretary of state at the time, Harris decided every disputed issue in Bush's favor. Democrats accused her of stealing the election from Al Gore. Commentators skewered her and comedians made jokes about her makeup. Harris hasn't been able to shake that Dragon Lady image.

That's why Bill Nelson and Florida Democrats are grateful to have Harris on the November ballot. If they have their way, Katherine Harris will be the issue, not Bill Nelson's record. Many Republicans are going through the motion of supporting Harris, realizing that sooner or later the GOP had to allow Harris to exhaust her political ambitions, for better or worse. If she is trounced by Nelson, maybe she will disappear from Florida's political scene.

The Nelson-Harris race is sure to tighten in the fall, but keepers of the conventional wisdom believe Harris will need a political miracle to pull off an upset. Polls suggest independent voters, who could cast the decisive votes, find Harris too partisan for their taste.

Harris' hard-core Republican supporters believe she has suffered political and personal abuse at the hands of the Democrats and the press, and that she is unfairly blamed for the outcome of the 2000 vote. In the end, it was the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 vote, that stopped the Florida recount. And who cast the decisive vote? Why none other than recently retired Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the court's swing vote and sudden liberal icon.

Do Democrats hold O'Connor responsible for the outcome? To the contrary, they now revere her very name. They pleaded with the president to use O'Connor as a model for his Supreme Court nominations. Democrats apparently have forgiven O'Connor for her vote in the Florida recount case because of her defense of abortion rights.

But wait a minute. Did the Supreme Court really hand George W. Bush the presidency? By most standards, recounts conducted by news organizations found that Bush would still have won by a hair even if the high court had sided with the Gore campaign.

Here's a thought: Gore lost the election in the liberal Democratic stronghold of South Florida. Maybe if the Palm Beach County elections supervisor - a Democrat - had not designed that confusing and now infamous butterfly ballot, Al Gore would have delivered the inauguration speech he had been working on.

Philip Gailey's e-mail address is gailey@sptimes.com

[Last modified February 3, 2006, 23:44:01]