Congressman Connie Mack IV of Cape Coral (near Fort Myers) says
he plans to join the race for the 2012 Republican U.S. Senate
nomination from Florida, though he hasn’t made if official yet.
Official or not, recent polls show Mack, son of former
U.S. Senator Connie Mack III (grandson of the Philadelphia
Athletics long-time manager and owner) to be an instant
front-runner. So far in front, in fact, to be 23 points ahead of
the second guy. What’s more, he may actually be competitive with
liberal Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, who is seeking his third
term.
Quinnipiac found Mack to be the choice of 32 percent of
Republican voters polled. Doubtless some voters are confusing this
Mack with his father, who served in the U.S. Senate from 1989 to
2001, there being no reason for anyone not from Southwest Florida
to recognize a Fort Myers congressman. If Connie IV prevails, after
it’s sorted out which Mack is actually running, he would get to run
against Nelson, who, with a 98 percent record of voting with the
Obama administration should be vulnerable in center-right
Florida.
Attorney George LeMieux, who served the final 16 months of
former Senator Mel Martinez’s term, was runner up with a distant
nine percent. Plant City businessman Mike McCalister was third at
six percent. Craig Miller and Adam Hasner each rang up two percent.
That is within the 2.9 percent margin of error, so these two
candidates, admirable in many ways, may actually have negative
support.
These results have to be particularly discouraging for
former Florida House Majority Leader Hasner, who has been
campaigning for more than a year and has attempted to market
himself as the next Marco Rubio. So far, in terms of voter
reaction, he’s closer to the next Jon Huntsman. Hasner has
connected with various conservative groups and personalities who’ve
endorsed him. But so far he’s made about as much impression on
Republican voters as Georges Carpentier made on Jack Dempsey
(which, Carpentier admitted after the fight, was none at
all).
The most encouraging numbers in the Q-Poll for Republicans
are that Mack matches up just two points behind Nelson at 40 to 42,
much better than any of the pre-Mack candidates have been able to
manage in a Republican race that the word lackluster doesn’t begin
to describe.
Of course it’s a bit early for Florida Republican
officials to start high-fiving. Republicans have just experienced
another candidate who jumped out in front in the presidential
sweepstakes before he was even in the race, only to fade in fairly
short order. How’s that Rick Perry candidacy working out
now?
Perry lost traction even before it became clear that his
first calamitous debate performance was not a fluke. He lost
support after it became clear he might not be as conservative as
the Republican base thought him to be.
One of the issues conservatives consider Perry to be weak
on is immigration. Mack may turn out to have similar problems. He’s
been harsh in his criticism of Arizona’s immigration law, going so
far as to call it Nazi-like. (Yes, I know. That’s what Democrats
do.) He also supported liberal former Florida governor Charlie
Crist in his Senate race against Rubio in 2010. This one will also
require some explaining.
Mack may be able to finesse these things. He has a
generally conservative record in his two and a half terms in the
U.S. House. And Republicans are really looking for someone they can
rally behind.
Mack probably won’t be gigged on the
fact that he passed on the Senate race in March. Here’s what he
said then: “I’ve got two small children and it’s hard enough to
spend a lot of good quality time now. I have a wife. They are all
very important to me and at the end of the day family has to be
number one.”
All right. Nobody believes office holders or potential
candidates when they say they’re passing up a race to spend more
time with the family. The translation to that old chestnut is, “I’m
not in because I don’t believe I can win.” Florida Senate President
Mike Haridopolos, a fund-raising colossus, was in the race in
March, and the “experts” had him penciled in for the win. He has
since dropped out of a race that so far has had all the excitement
of a Wally Cox retrospective with all the thrills taken
out.
There’s almost a year before voters finally decide who
Florida’s next U.S. Senator will be. Now red Florida is represented
in the Senate by one conservative and one liberal. That could
change. And for the time being, Florida Republicans can at least
take comfort in the fact that they have a leader in the Senate
sweepstakes who is not named None of the Above.
