Politics

Thompson courts Florida vote

By ADAM C. SMITH, Times Political Editor
Published September 14, 2007

THE VILLAGES - A lot of political pros say it's too late to mount a strong presidential campaign when so many candidates have been at full steam for months.

But apparently they haven't convincedthe 1,000 people who showed up to cheer Fred Thompson in the Villages on Thursday. Or Nancy Weaver, who went to see the newest candidate make his first Florida campaign stop in Jacksonville.

"I'm so stoked, and up until now I haven't been," the 40-year-old Jacksonville sales manager gushed. "I have a very conservative group of friends, and every one of them is excited about Fred. We hadn't been excited about any of the Republicans until now."

The would-be savior of the beleaguered Republican Party is 6 foot 5, speaks in a folksy drawl, and on Thursday started a three-day Florida bus tour that found a lot of Republicans hungry for another option in the GOP field.

"People have been talking about some of the guys that were already in the race - 'When's Thompson going to get in? When's Thompson going to get in?' Well, I'm all in, I hope they like what they get!" roared Thompson, who tested the waters for months and finally jumped into the race last week.

Nick Jones, a retiree in the Villages sprawling Central Florida development, said most of his friends in the Republican club have been unenthusiastic all year.

"Then Fred comes along and it's like a ray of sunshine," said Jones, standing in the shade of Thompson's campaign bus. "In just two weeks he's gained momentum like I've never heard of in my life, and I think it's really because people see he's got core values."

The Law & Order actor and former Tennessee senator is already in second place or leading in national polls. The coming weeks will be crucial to determining whether he remains a top contender.

And Florida, where Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have been campaigning for months, is key to the Thompson strategy. His staff is full of Florida veterans.

While polls show Romney leading in Iowa and New Hampshire, Thompson hopes his Southern appeal can carry him to the nomination with wins in South Carolina on Jan. 15 and Florida on Jan. 29.

"We realize we're behind the curve as it relates to these others guys structurally and whatnot, but we have a great candidate people respond to," said Randy Enwright, a veteran Florida operative who is Thompson's national political director.

A Quinnipiac University poll released Wednesday showed Giuliani leading Thompson in Florida, 28 percent to 17 percent. An InsiderAdvantage poll released the same day by the Florida Chamber of Commerce showed Thompson leading Giuliani in Florida, 27 percent to 21 percent.

Still, Thompson has some boning up to do on Florida issues. Taping an interview for Political Connections, a joint venture of the St. Petersburg Times and Bay News 9, Thompson was noncommittal on a national catastrophic fund to ease Florida's property insurance crisis.

"I don't know enough about it yet," he said in the interview, which airs Sunday. "That's one of the things I want to talk to people about while I'm down here."

Thompson also was vague on whether Congress was right to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case in 2005: "Local matters generally speaking should be left to the locals. ... I don't know all the facts surrounding that case, I can't pass judgment on it. I know that good people were doing what they thought was best."

Thompson is a longtime lobbyist from the Washington area and served in the Senate for eight years after winning Al Gore's seat in 1994. On the stump, he comes off as a folksy outsider with a familiar GOP message: stick with the strategy in Iraq, cut federal spending, secure America's borders.

The opening for Thompson comes from the wariness many have about the conservative credentials of Giuliani and Romney. Giuliani, for instance, supports abortion rights, and Romney did too until shortly before he started running for president.

Rep. Adam Putnam of Bartow, who has endorsed Thompson, said the race in Florida is shaping up to be Giuliani vs. Thompson.

"At the grass roots level, the response to Fred Thompson is unbelievably strong," said Putnam, the third highest ranking Republican in the U.S. House. "At the major donor level there are still a remarkable number of people who are still on the sidelines that are gettable and are coming Thompson's way."

One major Republican fundraiser, Tampa businessman Dick Beard, joined Thompson because he couldn't get excited about the others.

"He's a positive, new fresh face and he's got the kind of personality that can win the presidency. ... Every time I see him I think of an admiral on a carrier in the Atlantic going to war," Beard said of Thompson, who played an admiral in the 1990 film TheHunt for Red October.

Adam C. Smith can be reached at asmith@sptimes.com or 727893-8241.

[Last modified September 14, 2007, 01:02:00]