TAMPA — The race for the Republican nomination to the U.S.
Senate seat Mel Martinez is not seeking re-election to in 2010 —
which pits liberal Florida Governor Charlie Crist against
conservative former Speaker of the Florida House Marco Rubio —
is not exactly heating up. But it’s taking shape. There’s good
and bad news for the right.
The good news is that Rubio is demonstrating he can excite the
conservative base of the Republican Party with his call to “take
our country back” with policies that support family values,
limited government, and leave stimulating the economy and
creating jobs up to entrepreneurs. He did it again last weekend
at several campaign stops across the Tampa Bay Area.
Hillsborough County Republican Chairman Deborah Cox-Roush was
looking for about 150 to attend Friday night’s “Issues and Ideas”
dinner featuring Rubio at a hard-to-reach, auto-sclerotic
location near the University of South Florida in north Tampa.
What she got was 306 diners who cheered lustily when Rubio
charged that “the stimulus package hasn’t stimulated anything but
the national debt.” He said promiscuous government spending that
goes under the name of the “stimulus,” which Crist supports, is
“based on short-term thinking that doesn’t solve our current
problems by spending money we don’t have and giving the bill to
future generations.”
The crowd also liked it when Rubio said the best the proposed
carbon cap and trade scheme, which Crist also fancies, could do
would be to “make America a clean, third-world country.” He calls
it “nothing but a revenue source masquerading as an environmental
policy that wouldn’t do a thing for the environment.” They
clapped and whistled their agreement to Rubio’s noting that
“while we need to do a better job in health care, we don’t need
to turn 18 percent of the economy over to the federal government,
as the legislation being considered now would do.”
Rubio, whose parents came here from Cuba in 1959, said the way
for the Republicans to attract Hispanic voters (as well as any
other kind of voter) is not by adopting liberal policies or by
having Mariachi bands at rallies, but by pursuing policies that
assure future generations of Americans will continue to enjoy
freedom, prosperity, and opportunity.
But the bad news for conservatives is that while Rubio has
generated enthusiasm at events such as the one Friday night in
Tampa, he’s not generating much in the way of campaign
contributions. Rubio is grotesquely behind Crist in dialing for
dollars.
For the three months reporting period ending June 30, Crist set a
Florida Senate race fund-raising record by collecting a gaudy
$4.3 million, much of it out-of-town money collected by
high-powered lobbyists in Washington and Tallahassee. Some of it
even comes from swells who attended fund-raising dinners for
Crist in the Hamptons (we all know how keen Hamptons swells are
on Florida concerns). This haul by Crist was more than 12 times
as much as the modest $340,000 the Rubio campaign fetched in over
the same period.
Rubio and his campaign officials have tried to put the best
possible face on the money disparity, and on the fact that the
disappointing cash flow has forced them to cut paid campaign
staff. They point out that as a popular sitting governor Crist is
in a great position to shake the money tree. He’s getting a great
deal of help from silk-stocking corporate and legal circles. As
for the Hamptons crowd, Florida media report dinner donors for
Crist include such Florida enthusiasts as Donald Trump and Johnny
Damon (of the New York Yankee Damons).
Rubio maintains that he doesn’t have to match Crist’s
fund-raising, just get enough to get his story out. He’s probably
right about this. Most polls show Crist leading Rubio in the
neighborhood of 20 to 25 points. But a Mason-Dixon poll earlier
this month shows the race about even between Republican voters
who are familiar with both candidates. Being speaker of the house
doesn’t lead to nearly as much name recognition as being governor
does. So Rubio’s challenge is getting known, which, if the
Mason-Dixon poll is correct, would lead to a much more
competitive race.
If he doesn’t have to raise as much as Crist to succeed, Florida
is a still huge state with 10 media markets. He’ll have to do
better than $340K per quarter. He’ll have to get folks across the
state, like the ones he inspired Friday night in Tampa, to stop
clapping long enough to pick up their check books.
Rubio has a long time to do this. The Republican primary isn’t
until August 24, 2010. Rubio is campaigning full-time while Crist
still has to at least appear to be paying attention to his job as
governor. Crist has also been spending a fair amount of time in
Washington and New York accepting campaign checks. And Crist
won’t have another quarter like this last one. Many of his
contributors are maxed out, and so can’t give more. Also, much of
the money Crist has collected can’t be used until the general
election, so isn’t available to use in the race against Rubio.
It’s rare to see such a clear liberal vs. conservative contest in
a Republican primary. The stands Rubio is taking in his campaign
and his record during eight years in the Florida House mark him
as a clear conservative.
Crist, who has held countless elected offices in Florida, none
for very long, is something else again. He likes to be called a
populist. (He’s particularly fond of the treacly sobriquet, “the
people’s governor.”) The fawning media mostly refer to him as a
moderate. What he is is a liberal. This isn’t entirely by design.
Those who’ve followed Crist through the years can’t detect any
core political philosophy in him. It’s just that in his desire to
be all things to all people he’s prone to supporting big,
expensive environmental boondoggles.
Crist claims, and to an extent deserves, credit for holding the
line on new or increased state taxes in Florida. But any savings
Floridians may enjoy from tax increases that didn’t take place on
Crist’s watch (not that his heavily Republican legislature has
been eager to increase taxes anyway), are trifling compared to
the expense of the mega-government policies Crist has whooped up.
These have included pressuring the Florida Legislature to adopt a
state carbon cap and trade system and to force Florida utilities
to use 20 percent “renewable” fuels to generate electricity, a
percentage anyone but a hard-core environmentalist would know is
unreasonable. He also pushed for Florida to adopt California’s
expensive auto emissions standards. Any one of these three would
cost Floridians a packet and not improve the environment.
Crist hasn’t had a thing positive to say about any conservative
social issue. And he recently appointed a liberal to the Florida
Supreme Court. With finger to the wind, Crist announced last week
that if he were in the Senate now he would likely not vote for
Sonia Sotomayor because he says he fears “she would not strictly
and objectively construe the Constitution.” Rubio called Crist on
this one, saying the guy Crist recently appointed to the highest
Florida court, Justice James Perry, is more of an activist judge
than Sotomayor.
This election will tell us a lot about what Florida Republicans
are all about. About what national Republicans are about as well.
(Most of the national Republican muftis have lined up behind
Crist.) The race has been described in several quarters as “a
battle for the soul of the Republican Party.” It will also
demonstrate whether a slow but relentless retail ground-game with
limited media can succeed in a large state against a
well-financed candidate the establishment is firmly behind.
If Rubio could pull this off and then get past the Democrat in
November of ‘10, he would become one of the most conservative
members of the Senate. And it wouldn’t hurt the Republicans’
prospects in Florida, and nationwide, to have an energetic,
young, conservative Hispanic senator as a face of the party.
