TAMPA – The guy who wrote the song “In the Good Ole
Summertime” wasn’t from around here. Florida summers
aren’t for sissies.
Nineties-everyday-except-when-it-rains-all-day begins in May and
lasts into October. And it’s NOT a dry heat. Summer visitors here
soon learn why Florida’s state bird is mildew.
Overnight lows in Tampa, not the “feels-like” but the
actual temperatures, are mostly in the “low” eighties. Thanks to
saturation humidity the feels-like rarely drops below 90, even at
night. The early morning walk here-abouts has the feel of dog
paddling through warm onion soup. Don’t even think about jogging
unless you take lots of water and two EMTs with you. Whoever
around here refers to August as “the dog days” has a mighty low
opinion of dogs.
While coping with these high, soggy temps, Floridians this
time of year are obliged to keep an eye on the tropics for storms
and rumors of storms. Thanks to El Niños and dumb-luck, Florida
has sustained little storm damage over the past four summers,
though hurricanes busted up the place pretty badly in ‘04 and
‘05. Weather experts (recent events cast doubt on the whole
concept of weather experts, but let it pass) say were in for an
“active” storm season this year.
At least this time of year Floridians don’t usually have to
put up with political campaigns, even in even-numbered years. But
there are several intense races this year, and the state’s
primary day has been pushed back to August 24. So in this
normally politically peaceful period, Floridians dare not turn on
their TVs for fear of lurid messages such as, “My opponent
snatches food from the mouths of widows and orphans, pulls wings
off of butterflies, and makes passes at winos at the bus station.
I, on the other hand, am pure as the driven snow, have the wisdom
of Solomon, and can provide the one true answer to a happy life.”
Don’t even think of answering the phone at dinnertime. It’s bound
to be a robo-political call.
The above quote is fairly close to actual transcripts of
some of the toxic ads Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and
nearly-unknown businessman Rick Scott have been throwing at each
other in their all-below-the-belt-all-the-time scrabble for the
Republican nomination for governor. Both agree that the main
issues facing Florida are jobs and the economy. But they’ve spent
most of their campaigns painting such vile portraits of each
other that the upshot of the millions they’ve spent for TV adds
is that Florida’s Democratic Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink,
who has trailed both McCollum and Scott for months, is now
competitive.
Scott, one of the two incomprehensively rich outsiders
seeking statewide office in Florida, has spent more than $23
million of his own money, mostly on TV adds in Florida’s 10 media
markets. He held a six-point lead over McCollum in the most
recent poll. Scott is using this year’s ambient anti-incumbent
feeling against McCollum, who had a 20-year career in Congress
from the Orlando area and was elected Florida’s attorney general
in 2006. McCollum’s long record is that of a conservative and
responsible politician, but this year “career politician” is the
kiss-of-death designation.
Naples resident Scott was CEO of HCA/Columbia hospitals
when that outfit was accused of Medicare fraud, for which the
company eventually paid a record $1.7 billion in fines. Scott has
said he had no idea gambling was going on at Rick’s, but the
company cashiered him anyway. Scott avoids the media like Dracula
avoided sunlight, and when asked about HCA he says he didn’t know
what was going on – not a real recommendation for a guy who wants
to run a state with 20 million residents and a $70 billion budget
– and he was never indicted. Well, that’s something.
McCollum, and most of the Republican establishment which
supports him, has tried to make an issue of the HCA mess,
obviously not too successfully to this point. McCollum is almost
out of time and money to make his case. McCollum is running the
table on newspaper endorsements, and the still mega-popular
former Florida governor Jeb Bush will campaign for him this week.
So the race will likely go right to the wire.
The other rich guy pumping millions into Florida television
stations is Jeff Greene, a recent entry in the race for the
Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate seat. Greene wants to
take the prize, if such it is this year, away from Miami
Congressman Kendrick Meek, who’s been in the race since John Paul
Jones was in ensign and is the party-backed candidate.
Greene is a Palm Beach billionaire real estate investor who
made much of his improbable fortune through the use of credit
default swaps, a pernicious investment instrument that amounts to
a bet that homeowners can’t make their mortgage payments (for
which activity Meek calls Greene the “meltdown mogul”). Meek
holds a slight poll lead over Greene, who in addition to pulling
in dodgy millions on the suffering of former home owners, keeps
some pretty strange friends, including Mike Tyson, Hollywood
madam Heidi Fleiss, and Lindsay Lohan. Happy days are here again,
eh?
Both the gaudy Greene and the uninspiring Meek,
off-the-rack liberals on issues, poll below 20 percent against
the real candidates in the Senate race, conservative Republican
Marco Rubio and former RINO and now partyless chameleon Florida
governor Charlie Crist (I-Charlie).
It’s a clear enough choice. Rubio had a conservative record
as Speaker of the Florida House and is running on conservative
principles and a pledge to oppose the Obama agenda in Washington.
He wants to cut federal spending and government power, adopt
policies that grow the economy, pursue a vigorous foreign policy,
protect Americans’ personal freedoms, and nurture rather than
attack those things that have made America exceptional and could
keep her so. Rubio has gained the endorsement of just about every
conservative organization and the support of every conservative
above the rank of lance corporal in the nation.
This is a race conservatives across the nation are keeping
an eye on because they see an able conservative champion in the
39-year-old Rubio. They see something quite different in Crist,
who in his 18-year political career has achieved little and has
held just about every position on every issue at one time or
another. Crist, who has to consult cue cards or political
consultants to remind him what his positions are on any given
day, is shifty and principle-less even by the standards of career
politicians.
The remarkable thing is not that a fraud of a politician
would change positions so rapidly and often as to make John Kerry
a poster boy for consistency by comparison. No, the stunner is
that Crist currently leads in most polls by margins of just a few
points to the low double-digits. This is largely on the strength
of support from Democrats who are unenthused by the two sad sacks
in their race and see Crist as the de facto Democrat. Crist has
declined to say which party he would caucus with if he won. “I’ll
caucus with the people of Florida,” he says helpfully.
This one will probably be decided by how many Democrats
decide to go home by Election Day, and how many of the twenty
percent of so of Republicans who now say they’d vote for Crist do
the same. Poll numbers will start to mean more in September and
October when the defining media wars start in earnest. Both
Crist’s and Rubio’s campaigns are well financed.
Temperatures will be mild again, industrial-strength
humidity will have vanished, and it will be safe to watch TV or
answer your phone again in Florida after November 2.
