Politics

To win Florida, Clinton looks north

The ex-president boosts his wife's campaign in the GOP-dominated part of the state.

By JENNIFER LIBERTO, Times Staff Writer
Published August 9, 2007

Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., stands with her husband former president Bill Clinton during a rally at the Iowa state fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa
	[AP photo]

DESTIN -- Dueling bumper stickers touting Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton adorn Jimmy Bobo's red 2006 Ford Explorer, which he drove Monday to a political rally deep in Republican-dominated Okaloosa County.

The retired Air Force master sergeant, who hasn't decided whom he's supporting for president, loves President Bill Clinton, the headliner Monday at a beachfront fundraiser for Sen. Clinton. Bobo also likes Sen. Clinton, but he said Republicans in the Panhandle, and even some Democrats, tend to say nasty things about her.

"I've got to think it's just the more conservative types who rub off on other folks," said Bobo, 57, who works for the local school district.

North Florida may be Republican country, but past elections dictate that Democrats who want to win statewide need at least to do well in North Florida and the Panhandle. Democrats who get clobbered from Pensacola to Jacksonville can't win Florida, political analysts say.

This could be bad news for Sen. Clinton.

"She has a public persona among a certain group in the country that she's very opinionated and hard-edged, which, in fact, when you get to know her, she isn't," said Sen. Bill Nelson, a Democrat who won more than 40 percent of the Panhandle last year. He hasn't endorsed a presidential candidate.

"As (negative) image starts to change, then, not only in North Florida but in all of Florida, it starts to bring it to where she can win the state."

On Wednesday, a Quinnipiac University poll suggested that Floridians with positive perceptions of Sen. Clinton are starting to outnumber those with negative perceptions; a similar poll last month showed equal numbers of Floridians with good and bad perceptions.

Electoral math

President Bill Clinton's appearance at the Harbor Docks seafood restaurant in Destin on Monday night, where he raised more than $300,000 for his wife's campaign, suggests that the Clinton campaign understands Florida's electoral math and doesn't plan to write off North Florida.

President Clinton told the private gathering Monday that his wife's experience and moderate views on foreign affairs will serve North Floridians well, especially those with ties to the military, according to those who attended the private fundraiser.

"I think she will do better than you think (with military voters) because she has an enormous amount of allies around the country in the military," he said to the media after the fundraiser.

However, among those stalwart Democrats who gathered to cheer on President Clinton and Democrats in general for four hours along a noisy U.S. 98 in muggy heat on Monday, many said they weren't sure yet if they were going to vote for Sen. Clinton in the state's Jan. 29 primary.

"I think she's probably more electable than the other candidates, but I kind of like Bill Richardson," said Charlie Agnew, 72, of Niceville, a retired federal employee who was wearing a tie with cartoon drawings of President Clinton. Agnew even bragged how he went to the president's 1992 inauguration. But, he added that the president's affair and the resulting public scandal irritate many Panhandle Floridians.

Vicki Kovach, 61, a retired teacher, wore a T-shirt for presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich to the Clinton rally.

"There's a lot of things I like about Clinton," said Kovach, who lives in Fort Walton and prefers Kucinich because he appears less beholden to corporate influence. "The fact that she gave the go-ahead on the war in Iraq turns a lot of people off."

'A huge message'

Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, the only other Democrat elected statewide, said that Sen. Clinton has the potential to get the numbers she needs. After all, Clinton managed to win upstate New York in her U.S. Senate race, after barely any time living in the state.

"She moved there as a carpetbagger, yet she was able to go up into the very rural upstate New York area and let people kind of touch and feel her and get to know her face to face, and she won them over," said Sink, who won more than 40 percent of North Florida. "There's that hard-core group in North Florida that never in a bazillion years would vote for a Clinton. But there's that other group that would be open-minded and would give her that 40 percent in North Florida."

Sink, who also hasn't endorsed any presidential candidate, said that Clinton's challenge will be finding the time in a national election to campaign in North Florida, where the pay-off in numbers is comparatively low.

Indeed, President Clinton joked to those who attended the $2,300-a-plate fundraiser that he had understood the Panhandle was home to only four Democrats, according to attendee Dee Dee Ritchie, a former Democratic state House member from Pensacola.

"His being there sent a huge message, loud and clear, that they will not ignore northwest Florida," said Ritchie, a real estate agent.

The Democratic political rally may have been a first for Okaloosa County, said many who cheered outside the fundraiser, waving happily at those who drove by booing and shouting obscenities from Ford pickups and Hummers.

Okaloosa County is the kind of place where the Democratic Women's Club's "adopt-a-highway" sign on U.S. 98 spends almost as much time knocked down as it does standing, said Bobbye Sikes Wicke, 76, a daughter of former Democratic congressman Bob Sikes. The Fort Walton retiree was coy about whom she planned to support in the primary, but insisted she would vote Democrat in the general election.

"We're going to be real happy with whoever we get," said Wicke, while waving a big Democratic Party sign and inhaling on a cigarette.

Times staff writer Adam C. Smith contributed to this report, which used information from the Associated Press.

[Last modified August 8, 2007, 22:03:49]