Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

On campaign trail, the snit hits the fan

By STEVE BOUSQUET
Published August 6, 2006

Charlie Crist brought his own fan to keep cool in a stifling hall.

Tom Gallagher protested and threatened to walk out. But thanks to the fan, he cooled off, too.

Last week's episode involving a portable fan at a campaign forum can be seen as a metaphor for the race between Crist and Gallagher for the Republican nomination for governor.

Crist doesn't overlook the small stuff. By breezily toting a fan to a sweltering community center in Polk County on Tuesday night, he looked better prepared in a race that so far has generated more hot air than real substance.

Gallagher, in a freshly starched white shirt, was caught off-guard. In the heat of the moment, a politician with more than three decades on Florida's political stage lost his cool.

He walked up to the table where the moderators sat. "Hey guys," he said moments before air time. "What's the deal with the fan?"

Then came a flash of anger. Wagging his finger at the moderators, he said: "You can't have fans. That's just not gonna happen, or I'm walking out. So unplug it."

The faceless moderator, his back to the camera, seemed to freak out for a moment.

"Can we get another fan here?" he shouted. "We're trying to get one right now."

The forum was shown live on Bay News 9 and can still be seen on Channel 340 on Tampa Bay on Demand.

Viewers did not see the fan spat. It happened during a commercial break just before the candidates went on the air.

"I know you don't mind sharing your cool air," Gallagher said to Crist as the two men shook hands, breaking the tension.

"Yeah," Crist said. "Come on over."

"How many days left? Thirty-six?" Gallagher asked Crist.

"Something like that," Crist replied.

"How many ed boards have you done?" Crist asked.

"Two," Gallagher said. "I did the Sun-Sentinel and Palm Beach Post."

As the two men shot the breeze, it became clear a second fan could not be found.

"Just put it in the middle," Crist told a technician near the stage. Then, after repositioning the fan a second time, Crist asked Gallagher, "You feel it all right?"

Moments later and cooled by Crist's fan, Gallagher wallowed in the weeds of policy, leaving his audience behind.

He wanted the voters of Poinciana to know that he supported their effort to get a local hospital. He described it as "the C.O.N. process," shorthand for certificate of need, the bureaucratic term for hospital approval.

Gallagher criticized Crist on taxes, class size and other issues. But they were polite jabs, not haymakers.

"Cool Air Charlie" has a record of having a fan around. As a state senator years ago, he would have cool air blowing his way at news conferences, close enough to get the job done but just beyond camera range.

Campaigning the following day in the Villages, a retirement mecca south of Ocala, Crist joked about the fan incident and recalled Ronald Reagan's famous reaction during a debate in New Hampshire when someone tried to cut him off.

"I almost felt like saying, 'Mr. Gallagher, I paid for that fan!' But I resisted that temptation," he said.

Come to think of it, Gallagher could have handled it differently, too. He might have said nothing about the quietly oscillating fan until they were on live TV. Then, quoting Harry Truman, he could have said: "If you can't stand the heat, Charlie, get out of the kitchen."

"Unlike my opponent, I can take the heat," Gallagher might have said. "I have the experience. I've been tested. Unlike my opponent, who has to bend the rules and carry around his own fan so you can't see him sweat. Does Florida really want a governor who has to rely on props?"

But things never got that hot. The little fan worked just fine. Crist, with that big lead in the polls, never even broke a sweat.

Steve Bousquet can be reached at bousquet@sptimes.com or 850 224-7263.

[Last modified August 6, 2006, 06:37:38]