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The Buzz: Florida politics

Gallagher pollsters dig deep to find good news

By TIMES STAFF WRITERS
Published April 23, 2006

Tom Gallagher's gubernatorial campaign is touting to key supporters an internal poll astonishing in size. In a memo from consultant David Johnson, the campaign says it surveyed 3,000 likely Republican voters. That's an extraordinaryly large sample.

New campaign reports show the March 14 expense of $94,975 to Virginia's Grassroots Targeting LLC. Gallagher campaign manager Brett Doster said it's part of the micro-targeting the campaign is using, borrowing from the Bush-Cheney playbook.

"As we thought, drilling down deep into the likely Republican primary voters by oversampling in large numbers in the media markets has showed the race wide open at this point, with over one-third of primary voters undecided and only 18 percent of the voters in a "definite' category," Johnson wrote in a memo. In the statewide survey of proven and likely Republican primary voters, Charlie Crist leads Gallagher by only 2 percentage points, at 33-31. The margin of error for a sample of this size is plus or minus 1.79 percentage points.

Interesting media market numbers:

Tampa Bay: Crist 43 percent, Gallagher 21 percent.

Orlando: Gallagher 30, Crist 27.

Miami/Fort Lauderdale: Gallagher 35, Crist 24.

Jacksonville: Crist 30, Gallagher 28.

Mobile/Pensacola: Gallagher 31, Crist 23.

Fort Myers/Naples: Gallagher 28, Crist 27.

Johnson's memo also describes how the Gallagher camp will depict the choice between Chief Financial Officer Gallagher and Attorney General Crist to Republican primary voters.

The survey offered general descriptions of the candidates without mentioning their names:

Candidate A: 61-year-old married father; from Miami; former businessman; former state legislator and current state Cabinet member; led the initiative to defeat high-speed rail.

Candidate B: 49-year-old divorced man with no children; from St. Petersburg; lawyer; former state legislator and current Cabinet member; supported by leadership of the Florida Trial Lawyers.

"In this basic comparison, 60 percent of likely Republican voters surveyed said that they preferred Candidate A, the Gallagher profile. Only 19 percent said that they preferred the Crist profile, and 21 percent remained undecided," Johnson said.

BENSE IN OR OUT? Every time there's bad news about Republican Senate candidate Katherine Harris - which is often - speculation increases about whether someone else will get in the race. Mostly the talk has been about state House Speaker Allan Bense, who has consistently said he wouldn't run against Harris and that he is focused on the legislative session. Democrats and Republicans alike are anxiously counting the days until May 12, the final deadline to qualify for the ballot.

Just as Harris on Friday tried to get past new revelations she joined corrupt defense contractor Mitchell Wade for a $2,800 dinner, Bense stirred up talk he might get into the race. "If I had to bet, I'm probably at 50-50, but probably inclined to go home," Bense told the New York Times Regional Newspaper Group. "I think we've had a pretty good run so far in the (Florida) House and there's nothing wrong with quitting while you're ahead. But you never know."

Meanwhile, Republican activists gathered for their quarterly meeting in Tallahassee this weekend showered Bense with attention and a standing ovation Saturday, while Harris was said to have had a sparsely attended reception Friday night.

JEB-Q: Jeb Bush is featured in the new issue of GQ, which examines "why Jeb Bush can't run for president." The magazine says that "some Florida Republicans now fear that their party has moved so far to the right that a loss of power is inevitable" and offers a few sample quotes:

Republican state Sen. Mike Bennett of Bradenton: "The main reason the Republicans are going to lose control is because absolute power has let us move to the right. We're moving further and further off to the right, and we are going to lose the majority. First we are going to lose the Democrats who voted Republican, and then we will start losing Republicans. When you've got the power to push anything through, and there's nothing they can do about it, I think that's bad."

Democratic state Rep. Chris Smith of Fort Lauderdale on the governor's staff: "We call them Kool-Aid drinkers. They're these Republican youth - radical kids from the University of Florida, Florida State or the University of South Florida - that just want to come up and make a name for themselves. There is not enough white hair in his office."

THE MONEY CHASE: More than $36-million has been raised in Florida's mostly uncompetitive U.S. House races. The campaign finance tracker PoliticalMoneyLine compiled some of the campaign account balances as of March 31:

District 22: Clay Shaw (R) $2.05-million; Ron Klein (D) $1.54-million.

District 13: Vern Buchanan (R) $736,829; Tramm Hudson (R) $539,266; Nancy Detert (R) $49,235; Donna Clarke (R) $4,062; Christine Jennings (D) $421,854; Jan Schneider (D) $99,921.

District 9: Gus Bilirakis (R) $873,252; David Langheir (R) $6,090; Phyllis Busansky (D) $333,134; Bill Mitchell (D) $137,101.

District 10: C.W. Bill Young (R), $397,792.

District 11: Kathy Castor (D) $506,362; Les Miller (D) $213,578; Al Fox (D) $141,160; Scott Farrell (D) $25,531; Michael Steinberg (D) $3,988; Eddie Adams Jr. (R) $1,504; Mike Massaro (R) $247; James Greenwald (R) $42.

District 5: Ginny Brown-Waite (R) $406,541; Rick Penberthy (D) $10,224; John Russell (D) $2,159.

District 16: Mark Foley (R) $2.4-million; Tim Mahoney (D) $302,821.

District 8: Ric Keller (R) $1.16-million; Charles Stuart (D) $251,663; Homer Hartage (D) $19,682.

District 24: Tom Feeney (R) $640,149; Andy Michaud (D) $107,357.

District 6: Cliff Stearns (R) $2.16-million; David Bruderly (D) $8,094.

Adam C. Smith and Steve Bousquet contributed to this week's Buzz. More political news can be found at www.sptimes.com/blogs/buzz

[Last modified April 23, 2006, 00:49:08]