Bill McBride is getting into the campaign swing

Bill McBride, a big man with a soft voice, makes a compelling case for why Florida voters should deny Gov. Jeb Bush a second term next year. A tougher challenge, if he wins the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, will be to convince them that he has a better plan.

Speaking to the Suncoast Tiger Bay Club on Thursday, McBride gave even Republicans, who were heavily represented in the audience, something to think about. "Right now, this state is in jeopardy like it has never been in my lifetime," he said. If Bush is elected to another four-year term, "this state may not recover in some important ways." That doesn't sound like much of an exaggeration to anyone who has been tracking Florida's regression in recent years.

McBride, former managing partner of Holland & Knight, the state's largest law firm, cited a recent report by the St. Petersburg Times -- and a second study by the Florida Chamber of Commerce supporting the newspaper's findings -- showing that Florida has been losing ground in critical areas in the past decade. Among states, the Times reported, Florida ranks 43rd in per capita taxes, 41st in total spending, 49th in spending on education, 44th in the percent of personal income spent on public schools. Personal income, once 3 percent above the national average, fell to 5 percent below. Per capita bank deposits have dropped precipitously, from $7,600 to $4,200. Median household income is falling, and the state has gone from 29th to 33rd in the percentage of people living in poverty. Corporate headquarters are leaving the state, and new businesses are thinking twice before locating here.

This dismal picture is at the core of the message McBride is taking to the voters, and it should be at the center of next year's election, regardless of who the Democratic nominee is. McBride believes Bush and Republican legislative leaders are in an ideological and philosophical "rut" that keeps them from even acknowledging the state's problems, much less addressing them. He says the state's pro-business Republican leaders don't seem to understand that business growth depends on good public schools, a supply of skilled workers and adequate social services. "You have to invest," he said. "Cheaper is not better."

If McBride wins his party's nomination, the Tampa attorney will need to do more than indict the Bush administration for its policies. He will have to offer some specific tax and spending proposals of his own and acknowledge that Democrats, who ruled Tallahassee for the first half of the '90s, must share the blame for the ground Florida has been losing. The slide started under the late Gov. Lawton Chiles, a revered Democrat.

McBride wants to spend more on education and human services, but when asked where he would get the revenue to pay for his spending priorities, he seemed less surefooted. McBride told his Tiger Bay audience "we're in a hole" but added that we can't get out of it by just raising taxes. Part of the answer is reordering priorities. He rambled on, ignoring a timekeeper's cut-off bell, and finally came out in support of Senate President John McKay's campaign to reform the state's tax system by eliminating many of the exemptions from the sales tax. McBride went on to say the state's revenue sources are sufficient to meet Florida's needs and that McKay is on "the right track" by proposing that the state's sales tax should be applied fairly and equitably. McKay, by the way, is a Republican who has been out front of the Democrats on the need for tax reform.

As McBride travels the state warning that Florida's future is at risk, he will have to be careful not to come across as a business-as-usual Democrat who wants to return the state to the pre-Bush status quo in education and other areas. McBride is passionate on the need for the state to invest more in public education, almost to the point of sounding as if money is the whole of his education agenda. Of course we need to spend more on public education, especially for higher teacher salaries. However, new spending for public schools should be part of a broader package of education reforms.

At some point, McBride needs to give voters the rest of his plan -- how he would hold schools accountable, how he would break the bureaucratic inertia that makes real reform difficult to bring about, and how the state should measure student achievement. For what it's worth, a recent survey by Public Agenda, a nonpartisan research organization based in New York, found that principals and superintendents across the nation feel the biggest obstacle to school improvement is interference from parents, politicians and bureaucracy.

McBride has a strong message, and as his Tiger Bay performance demonstrated, he is getting better at delivering it. His indictment of the Bush administration is persuasive, and his own priorities would put Florida on the right track. He has a good head and a big heart and a compassionate soul. But he still has some homework to do.

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