TAMPA — I finally cornered one of the co-chairs of the McCain
campaign for Hillsborough County, which includes Tampa, and asked
him this highly-nuanced political question:
“So, how are you going to get the locals to vote for a
72-year-old, charisma-challenged geezer? After all, they have the
opportunity of voting for Mr. Wonderful, a glib matinee idol who
has graciously signaled his willingness to delay his fast-track to
sainthood in order to spend eight years in the White House and who
has his supporters as excited as leprechauns on St. Patrick’s
Day.”
His detailed answer was instructive (and probably deserved a
less smart-alecky question).
“We got zeal too,” said Greg Truax. And it’s better-organized
zeal, he said, as he looked over precinct maps and lists that show
every area of this huge county covered like the dew covers Dixie.
Truax promises a full-scale grassroots McCain campaign in
Hillsborough that includes door to door visitations, phone banks,
yard signs without end, a turn out the vote effort, et al. A
Republican junior banker wearing a tie can knock on as many doors
as a college student high on dreams of change (and nothing else, we
can hope). Maybe more. Anyway, that’s Greg’s story and he’s
sticking with it.
Truax said when the Hillsborough Republican headquarters opened
a couple of months back, Florida Republican Chairman Jim Greer gave
a coach’s pre-game pep talk to about 150 of the faithful gathered
at mid-day (150 at mid-day during the week — remember, these are
Republicans with jobs). Truax said the biggest applause line came
when Greer said Job One was “to elect John McCain the next
president of the United States.” Truax drew a picture of a team
ready to burst out of the locker room to charge out on the field
and block and tackle.
We’ll see.
TRUAX, A SMALL BUSINESS OWNER, is a veteran of many political
campaigns and looks it. He concedes the race between Obama and
McCain in Florida is and almost certainly will remain very tight.
But he predicts a win based on a strong showing in Central Florida
— aka the I-4 corridor — that runs from Daytona Beach through
Orlando to St. Petersburg, the most politically competitive part of
the state. Most Polls show McCain ahead slightly in this region and
in the state (even though Obama is outspending McCain wildly on
television ads in Florida). Truax aims to improve on this slightly
by Election Day.
McCain is very strong in the more culturally conservative North
Florida, except in the college counties of Leon and Alachua. Obama
is steroid-strong in the three large counties that make up South
Florida, aka Baja New York. (Here’s a quiz to measure savvy about
Florida politics: Question — How many boroughs make up New York
City? The untutored will answer five. Wrong. Florida sophisticates
know the correct answer is eight: Manhattan, Brooklyn, the Bronx,
Queens, Staten Island, Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach. The old
crones in Palm Beach County who admitted on camera in November of
2000 that they were too dim-witted to follow voting instructions at
the level of complexity of, “Punch a hole here,” all, without
exception, had New York accents.) The business will likely be
settled in Central Florida.
Hillsborough is a Republican county — a big majority of county
commissioners are Republicans, as is a majority of the Hillsborough
delegation to the Florida Legislature. The City of Tampa is a
Democratic enclave, represented by liberal Democrat Kathy Castor in
the U.S. House. The Tampa House seat was only created in 1962, and
has been held by Democrats for the duration. But Tampa is only
about 340,000 souls in a county of a 1.2 million. The burbs have
been reliably Republican for as long as most of the people who live
in this fast-growing area can remember.
Old duffer natives like me can remember Jim Crow and Dixecrats.
But this stuff is for the history books. When Tampa Democratic
Congressman Jim Davis left a safe seat in the U.S. House to run
against Republican (sort of) Charlie Crist for governor in 2006, he
not only got his clock cleaned statewide, he didn’t even carry his
own county. Until recent events, when so many elected Republicans
forgot they weren’t supposed to act like big-spending Democrats,
Central Florida has been a Republican stronghold. We’ll find out
November 4 how badly the brand has been damaged.
“John McCain’s message will be better received in Hillsborough
than Obama’s,” Truax said. “He’s (McCain) experienced and ready on
day one on national security issues. He understands the need to
hold the line on both government spending and taxes. Obama’s
liberal voting record will not play well in Hillsborough.” (That
is, if it’s aired before Election Day.)
While Team Obama is trying to coax African Americans and college
students to do their electoral duty (this latter group a
notoriously feckless lot, who Democrats always say will turn out
for their candidates, but who haven’t made it to the polls in any
numbers yet), Truax said McCain will get strong support from small
business owners, seniors, and veterans. Thanks to MacDill Air Force
Base, Central Command, and Special Operations Command in South
Tampa, there is a large military presence here, both active duty
and retired. A reliably Republican bloc.
“Obama’s message is like eating a donut,” Truax said. “It may
satisfy for an hour or so. But it doesn’t sustain because it’s
empty calories.”
IT’S HARD TO ARGUE with Truax’s donut analogy, or his general
tactics and approach. If his army of unpaid, local volunteers do
their work, and Republicans always go about their work more quietly
than Democrats, then this may help deliver a Florida victory for
McCain. The only stretch is Truax’s contention, perhaps more of a
hope, that the mainstream media will do a better job of covering
Obama and his record as the election nears.
Obama is not a single thing that he says he is. His voting
record may be thin, but it’s consistent. He’s not a reformer. He’s
not a uniter; he’s a down-the-line liberal Democrat (you could look
it up). He’s hardly the post-racial candidate. He’s voted for
affirmative action, which passes out the good things on the basis
of skin color, at every opportunity. And he attended for two
decades and generously supported a church whose pastor, with the
enthusiastic support of his flock, regularly spewed anti-America
and anti-white hatred.
The mainstream media have known all of this for more than a year
and have ignored it as much as they possibly could, largely because
they love Obama every bit as much as Romeo loved his Juliet. Hard
to imagine why they would drop their infatuation now and do their
jobs like the grownup men and women they purport to be.
Whether or not the mainstream media do their jobs, John McCain’s
prospects for the White House may well rest on how well Greg Truax,
his co-chair colleague, Hillsborough County Commissioner Mark
Sharpe, and their army of volunteers do theirs. There are various
ways that Obama can win the White House without winning Florida and
its 27 electoral votes. But there’s no way McCain can. It’s Florida
and/or bust for the old fighter jock. Truax and his counterparts
across Florida know this. They know it’s block and tackle time.
