Posted on 06/21/2002 9:28:36 AM PDT by summer
Gov. Bush, way ahead in polls, running like he's behind
Friday, June 21, 2002
By BRENDAN FARRINGTON, Associated Press
TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Jeb Bush is way ahead in the polls, as popular as he's ever been and raising millions more than the Democrats hoping to challenge him, yet he's running like he's 20 points behind.
Bush was the first - and still only - candidate to begin airing television ads, he's crisscrossed the state and country raising millions of campaign dollars, and has often taken his official state business on the road. His brother, President George W. Bush, is making his fourth trip this year to Florida on Friday for a fund-raiser in Orlando.
And when it was revealed that a White House computer disk listed Florida as a state where the GOP could lose the governor's seat to the Democrats, Bush readily agreed the race will be close.
"In Florida, anything can happen," he said.
The most recent poll showed the Republican governor was well ahead of the two front-running Democrats - 22 points ahead of former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and 26 points ahead of Tampa lawyer Bill McBride.
The telephone poll conducted June 7-11 by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research Inc. of 625 registered voters claims a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Bush's approval rating was 62 percent, six points higher than last year. The only time more Floridians said they like the job Bush is doing was two years ago, when a poll showed 63 percent approved.
That means nothing to Bush, he said.
"If you were 25 points ahead and you thought that was really the way it was going to be you'd probably be complacent, you'd probably not be focused, you probably wouldn't go out and raise the money necessary, you probably wouldn't push back when people lie about your record.
"And that is totally foreign to me," Bush said.
Democrats were delighted by the discovery of the White House disk and say Bush's aggressive campaigning is a sign that he's concerned about November.
"They know that they've got some significant vulnerabilities," said state Democratic Party Chairman Bob Poe. "While they haven't shown up in a lot of the polling in terms of head-to-head competition, they know that the issues are there that could knock the block out from under them."
Bush said people need only look back to the 2000 presidential election to see that Florida can swing either way politically. His brother barely won the presidency when he carried Florida by only 537 votes.
Still, Bush and the GOP have a huge edge in fund raising. As of March 31, Bush had raised $4.38 million and the Republican Party $20.8 million for state campaigns. McBride had raised $1.15 million, Reno $1.01 million, and the state Democratic Party $5.4 million.
And Bush has raised millions more for his campaign and the party since then. He was in California on Wednesday and Thursday for fund-raisers. On Friday, President Bush will join him for a state Republican Party dinner expected to take in $2.5 million.
Their mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, has also made stops in Florida to help her son, as has former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Bush's staff is constantly touting his record, often e-mailing news stories about other states' budget woes as a reminder that Florida quickly recovered from its economic slump.
As well as campaigning around Florida, Bush is taking his state business out of Tallahassee. He recently went to the Miami, Tampa Bay and Orlando areas to sign the same bill, holding news conferences at each stop. And next week he will hold the biweekly Cabinet meeting in Miami in what he calls "Capital for a Day."
His running mate, Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan, said trips around the state are nothing new, they just receive more attention in an election year.
"Capitol for a Day? We've been doing them for four years and this is just our time to do it again," he said. "If you look at the bill signings, we've been doing bill signings around the state of Florida for four years."
Bush is taking the right approach by being aggressive, said Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.
"He is working very hard right now, diligently. He's probably smart to do so," Jewett said. "If you end up winning by 10 percentage points you can say 'Look! It's because we worked so hard.' It's better than saying 'We lost by five votes.'"
Besides the closeness of the 2000 election, Jewett pointed out that Florida has more registered Democrats than Republicans, has never re-elected a Republican governor and has two Democratic U.S. senators.
He and others agree that poll numbers at this stage in the campaign are deceiving because not many people are paying attention to the election.
"I don't think the polls reflect the result of November," Reno said. "As more people get the message, they will understand better the issues."
"Florida is a toss up," added McBride. "They're enormously nervous because they see the same numbers we see: We're falling behind all other states in education, per capita income is going down ... he's trying to solve politically what he hasn't been able to solve as governor."
State Republican Party Chairman Al Cardenas said he has seen too many heartbreaking losses - George Bush to Bill Clinton in 1992 and Jeb Bush to Lawton Chiles in 1994 to name two - to take an election for granted.
"We've both been around and watched a lot of favorites not make it to the finish line and we aim to make sure that doesn't happen this time around," he said.
The City of Miami to be Capital For A Day [Hey, Miami! Have lunch w/Jeb next Tues., June 25th]
Expect fraud. Then base your entire campaign on anticipating it shall be used against you.
It's funny that you really can't campaign on that particular notion; it would sound contemptous and patronizing. But it's definitely the strongest asset for the state in Jeb's arsenal.
He was holding up a TEC-9 and talking about how he was going to take away our right to bear arms.
The comercials ran for another 3 days AFTER the election.
Democrats are complete morons.
Brought to you courtesy of the DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Had enough?????????
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