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Politics

Amid all the mud, big issue won out

Charlie Justice stuck to his platform: the high cost of insurance .

By CURTIS KRUEGER
Published November 9, 2006

The brutal state Senate campaign between Republican Kim Berfield and Democrat Charlie Justice may have come down to one big issue: homeowners' insurance.

Early in the Pinellas-Hillsborough District 16 race, before Justice even knew who his Republican opponent would be, he and his advisers resolved to hammer away at that one issue.

They did, with television ads that featured Justice promising, "I'll stand up to the big companies that price gouge us on homeowners' insurance."

That theme may have tipped the balance for Justice, who received an unofficial total of 51.3 percent of the vote. If Republican candidates nationwide were victims of the public's disenchantment with war in Iraq, Berfield may have been a casualty of Floridians' furor over property insurance rates.

"Charlie Justice stayed on message," said Jack Latvala, a Republican political consultant and former state senator who assisted Berfield's campaign before the primary. "He talked about insurance throughout the race."

"It was always about homeowners' insurance," said Justice campaign manager Mitch Kates.

Berfield hammered the insurance issue too, but she faced some challenges in doing so. In an early ad, she criticized Justice for taking campaign contributions from insurance companies and supposedly voting to help them, but she had taken 15 times as much insurance money herself.

She also portrayed herself as an insurance expert, a former chairwoman of the House insurance committee who helped the state resolve previous crises in medical malpractice insurance and workers compensation. But that allowed Justice to say she should have used her position to avert the current crisis.

Berfield's campaign focused on myriad issues, sending mailings about abortion, taxes and her work to help create a local park. In the final weeks of the campaign, the state Republican Party began criticizing a vote Justice made about criminal background checks for school employees: "Liberal extremist Charlie Justice voted to put the rights of pedophiles and sexual predators ahead of protecting our kids." A mailing said "Protecting CREEPS is not what he was elected for."

Latvala said Pinellas County voters don't appreciate such a harsh tone. "Trying to make Charlie Justice into some kind of a predator was a terrible mistake," he said. "It backfired."

Justice said he received an e-mail Wednesday from a woman whose Republican husband voted for Justice over Berfield "simply because he hated all the mail he got from her."

Berfield won an unofficial 55.8 percent of the vote in Hillsborough, where about a third of the district's voters live. But she received only 44.5 percent of the Pinellas vote.

[Last modified November 9, 2006, 05:50:37]