Posted on 06/03/2003 10:09:29 PM PDT by LdSentinal
Florida State Sen. Daniel Webster appears poised to enter the Republican primary to challenge Democratic Sen. Bob Graham next year.
Webster would join former Rep. Bill McCollum, who ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2000, and Rep. Mark Foley in the contest. Webster was not available for comment.
Webster, 54, is regarded as a principled social conservative. First elected to the Florida Legislature from central Florida in 1980, Webster came to preside over the House as speaker in 1996 when the GOP recaptured the chamber after 122 years. In 1998, he ran unopposed for the state Senate.
Rep. Tom Feeney (R-Fla.) all but endorsed his candidacy after a private conversation last week. "Tom and Dan Webster have discussed has discussed the possibility of him running for the Senate," a Feeney spokesman said. "Mr. Feeney thinks Sen. Webster would make an outstanding U.S. senator," he added.
"He's very well respected," echoed a conservative activist in Florida who declined to be identified. "There's no dirt on the man, that's for darn sure. And I mean there's none. You guys can keep looking and looking and looking, and you will. Not. Find. It."
Webster's campaign style, like the man himself, is reserved. He shuns political hobnobbing and prefers instead to work below the radar at the grassroots level. "He's got one of the biggest grassroots machines I've ever seen," said the activist. "I mean, just massive, massive amounts of ground troops."
Florida insiders say his entrance would change the dynamics of the race, forcing McCollum to try to shore up his conservative base and diverting attention away from Foley, a GOP centrist.
A McCollum supporter downplayed that scenario, noting that the former congressman has an established donor base and name recognition from his 2000 Senate bid. In that race, McCollum lost to Sen. Bill Nelson(D), 51 to 46 percent.
Meanwhile, other Republicans are also weighing whether to run.
Rep. Dave Weldon has said he is eyeing the race, and the White House is reportedly urging Housing and Urban Development Secretary Mel Martinez to jump in as well.
Moreover, Rep. Katherine Harris has allowed rumors to persist that she is also eyeing the seat should Graham abandon it in his quest for the presidential nomination. "Never say never," she told the Orlando Sentinel Monday.
Graham has yet to say whether he will seek re-election.
Some Florida Republicans expressed surprise that Harris was even considering the seat. "There's no way the White House will let her run," said an aide to a Florida Republican. "There's just no way the president's going to stand next to Katherine Harris on every stop in Florida in '04."
GOP activists in the Foley camp welcomed the possible entrance of both Webster and Weldon. Along with McCollum, the three politicians'principal support lies in conservative central Florida. A bitter internecine fight among these candidates would draw fire away from Foley, they said.
"They'll all be going for the same voters, the same money, the same media," said one supporter. "They'll be sitting around a circle shooting each other."
In further good news for Foley, on Monday the state's House and Senate leaders, both Republicans, endorsed the re-adoption of a single primary contest for the state. If approved, the primary becomes a first-past-the-post contest with no run-off. With so many conservatives vying for the same votes, Foley will have other Republicans to himself.
The Florida Senate race is expected to be among the costliest this cycle, with estimates running as high as $10 to 15 million. In the first quarter fundraising cycle, Foley reported $2.35 million cash-on-hand. McCollum posted $340,000.
Geez, this one's so basic. Yet it never even crossed my mind until seeing it here in print.
I just don't see Martinez jumping in, it almost seems like it's too late (unless he is self-financing).
"Just remember, the last State Senator to be elcted directly to the US Senate from that office was the late Lawton Chiles. How did Chiles beat Rep. William Cramer in 1970, by the way?"
Well, FL Republicans (which by 1970 were at the zenith of the power at any point since Reconstruction) expected to continue to build on their quick growth, but it was not to be. They were expecting two old 'Rat hacks (then-Atty Gen'l Earl Faircloth and ex-Gov. Farris Bryant) to run for Governor and Senator respectively, but they were both upended in the primary by the two upstarts, Reuben Askew over Faircloth and Chiles over Bryant. They were considered part of a new generation of Democrats at that point (albeit despite being rather liberal, were considered open and friendly enough to bring along old-time skittish Conservative Dems and GOP retirees from the north). You have to tie the races of Bill Cramer (who was the first GOP Congressman in FL when first elected in 1954, since Reconstruction) to that of incumbent GOP Governor Claude Kirk, who like Cramer, was a "first" (the first GOP Governor since Marcellus Stearns left office in 1877). Cramer and Kirk were expecting to cruise to wins, but both were bogged down in primary problems of their own. Cramer had to face the "pre-Borked" Judge G. Harrold Carswell (how come judges that get destroyed by 'Rats for the high bench, don't get called "Carswelled ?") who badly wanted to take a Senate seat just so he could tell his Borkers what they could do with themselves (the only successful persons as of late who was able to do something like that was Alcee Hastings in the House (who, BTW, was a candidate in that 1970 Senate race, coming in 4th) and Sen. Jeff Sessions). Carswell's entry was orchestrated by Kirk and the other GOP Senator, Ed Gurney, but because 1/4th of the GOP primary voters in the state came from Cramer's Pinellas County, and Carswell's strongest support came from Baja Alabama and Baja Georgia (which then had almost no Republicans), Carswell was dispatched by about a 2-to-1 margin. Cramer got Kirk back by discreetly backing a challenger in the Gubernatorial primary who came from Cramer's district, and almost was successful at getting Kirk beat (unlike Cramer, who had to face Carswell once, Kirk had to suffer through a humiliating primary runoff). But all of this infighting contrasted with the "friendly" Reuben and Lawton (of whom the latter embarked on a nationally famous "walk" across Florida in that campaign, later borrowed here in TN by Lamar Alexander in his successful race for Governor in 1978. Walkin' Lawton didn't do it as a "stunt", but because he couldn't afford to wage an expensive media campaign on his own, but his walk got him all the media coverage he could've ever desired), and Lawton similarly snatched the endorsement of outgoing Conservative Dem. Senator Spessard Holland. Cramer and Kirk both got blitzed in the fall (with Cramer doing very poorly in the Orlando-area of Kirk & Gurney because of the Gov's disgruntled supporters and Kirk, in turn, losing the then-heavily GOP area of Cramer's Pinellas County), leaving Ed Gurney as the lone statewide GOP official of the "big 3." Interestingly, Bill Young, who succeeded Bill Cramer in the House, is still the Congressman today 33 years later, but the district Young represents has drastically realigned (Pinellas was heavily GOP in 1970, and now leans 'Rat and voted solidly for Clinton and Gore in the recent elections, and was until reapportionment, even more 'Rat than Jim Davis's 11th). Young holds the seat by sheer force of personality and it will be difficult for us to hold if he retires. Both Bill Cramer and Claude Kirk are alive today, at 80 and 76, respectively.
I think Holland still wanted to play the loyal 'Rat and to his credit, Lawton Chiles paid him respect rather than running from him. Cramer was one of the few GOP successes in '54 when the GOP lost the House for its 40-year stretch in the minority, defeating a one-term 'Rat incumbent named Courtney Campbell (Campbell did have that northern causeway stretching from Clearwater to Tampa named for him, though, as a consolation prize).
"How did Ed Gurney win his seat and then lose it (actually, what I should say is how did the guy who replaced Gurney lose to Richard Stone)?"
Well, Gurney had toiled in local office for a decade in the '50s in Winter Park (Central FL) before joining Bill Cramer in the House in 1963 as the state's 2nd GOP federal officeholder. Gurney was reelected twice more before jumping into the Senate contest in 1968 when Sen. George Smathers (who was only a year older than Gurney) decided to conclude his 22-year career in Congress to go into a higher-paying career (Smathers, BTW, turns 90 this year, still active from last I heard). Gurney had nuisance opponent in the primary (winning 80%) and then was able to paint his 'Rat opponent, ex-Gov. LeRoy Collins, as an LBJ-liberal hack (when Johnson was positively toxic in Florida). Gurney was doing fairly well until he and Gov. Kirk, as I previously mentioned, blundered the 1970 Gubernatorial and Senatorial contests, leaving him the sole GOPer of the top 3 offices. Within 2 years, he was openly regarded as vulnerable, and Bill Cramer was thinking of challenging him, along with Gurney's own former law partner who succeeded him in his House seat, Lou Frey. Ultimately, what happened was that it wasn't Watergate that brought him down (where he remained a stalwart Nixon defender), but an indictment that he accepted a bribe from developers for interceding with the Federal Housing Authority. He chose not to run for reelection. The 1974 contest was interesting, because it had virtually all the same players in 1980. With Gurney out, the GOP had no one warming up in the bullpen. So out came FL Public Service Commissioner Paula Hawkins (no "-son"), and the man who former Rep. Cramer urged into the 1970 Gubernatorial contest and almost beat Claude Kirk, drugstore millionaire Jack Eckerd. Eckerd narrowly edged Hawkins, who returned to her old job "no sweat." The 'Rat side of things turned a wee bit ugly. Squaring off was one-term Congressman Bill Gunter and Secretary of State Dick Stone, who made it to the runoff. Gunter and Stone were both moderates, even borderling Conservative, and were either in Congress today, we'd probably be trying to get them to switch parties. Stone ran just slightly to the right of Gunter because of an issue Gunter had voted on in Congress to compensate poultry producers for chickens that died of some disease and Stone thought the producers were doing well enough by themselves, and by an achingly close margin, beat Gunter. Both Stone and Eckerd were equally matched going into the fall, but Stone won by only 2%, and that was a paltry plurality of 43% of the overall vote. Eckerd received 41% and the real spoiler in the race (almost as if it was 6 years earlier) was a George Wallacite candidate named John Grady who took a whopping 16%. He obviously took votes from Eckerd, who probably would've won the race despite being outspent 2-to-1 by Stone. Grady would become the GOP nominee against Sen. Lawton Chiles in '76, losing by an almost 2-to-1 margin.
"How on Earth did Paula Hawkinson beat whomever she beat in 1980 (I'm not sure wether Gunter or Stone won the primary because I have seen conflicting information on different websites)?"
Sen. Stone amassed a fairly decent and non-controversial record going into the 1980 elections, but he was having a few problems, namely that of Bill Gunter and Jimmy Carter. Because the state was a focal point of anger over the Cuban refugees (not the good Cubans, but the bad Cubans, like portrayed by Al Pacino in the fictional "Scarface", the criminals that were dumped on our shores) who were running amok in Southern FL and driving crime and drug trafficking to horrible proportions, so it was not a good time to be running for reelection as a 'Rat. As was the problem with Gurney (more on him later, as there is an addendum) who was beginning to be perceived as out of touch with FL, so was Stone. As a Jew, he was devotely pro-Israel, but was more popular out of state as a result. Bill Gunter was aching for a rematch, and got it. He ran for state Insurance Commissioner in '76, and so remained high-profile during the contest. Stone carried his Gold Coast home territory by a wide margin, but lost narrowly in the runoff as Gunter carried everything else. On the GOP side, the only real competition Paula Hawkins had was the previously mentioned Lou Frey, who had left Congress in '78 to run for Governor only to lose the primary to, you guessed it, Jack Eckerd (who then promptly lost to Bob Graham, running for his first term). Hawkins dispatched Frey and was expecting to face Dick Stone, but was going to face Gunter instead. Hawkins could not have had better luck, the fact that she and Gunter were both from the Orlando area, she nullified his hometown advantage. Worse for Gunter was the late date of the primary runoff, which was a month before the general, too late to unify the Dem vote. Jewish voters in the Gold Coast were utterly infuriated this "hick" had taken out their Senator, so all of Stone's voters mostly went to Hawkins, and all of central FL as well. Gunter only carried the rural areas (although it was still a close race, 52-48%). Flash forward 6 years later, and Hawkins, alas lost reelection by 10% to outgoing Gov. Graham. She amassed a decent record in the Senate, but Graham was massively popular and what harmed her was a dreadful performance during televised debates. It's interesting to note that issues one runs on one year can get you elected, but other years are a serious liability. Graham had criticized her for working on obscure legislation that mostly related to children's issues (such as abuse and Missing Children Assistance Act). Given recent nationally prominent problems with the subject of missing or abducted children, can you imagine criticizing someone over this today ? Hawkins "obscure" legislation would be cutting-edge now. It's also funny to note that in neighboring Alabama in the Senate race of the same year that then-Dem. Congressman Dick Shelby scolded GOP Sen. Admiral Jeremiah Denton about being out of touch with Alabamans because he owned two Mercedes-Benz autos. Flash forward a decade and Mercedes would be bringing a plant to the state, where Alabamans proudly manufacture the vehicles today. Denton would've relished replying, "I'm buying American, Mr. Shelby !" Shelby beat him by only 6,800 votes.
Now, a bit more about Ed Gurney after 1974. He was eventually acquitted of the charges that led to his early retirement (he claimed that an aide was the one that had been engaging in shady actions, unbeknownst to him, and apparently he was believed). Gurney pondered what to do next, and waited until 1978 before deciding to jump back into politics. When Lou Frey announced his retirement to run for Governor, Gurney jumped into the race for his old House seat that he had won 12 years earlier (albeit it was now more situated towards the Cape Canaveral area). Gurney thought he had a cinch on this Republican seat until a young upstart 'Rat State Representative put the kibosh on that, and Gurney's brief foray back into politics. That young fella was Bill Nelson.
"And lastly, do you have any details on the Bill Grant party switch?"
That was a strange one, to say the least. When longtime Congressman Don Fuqua retired in 1986, Bill Grant, a banker from a county adjacent to Tallahassee, won the primary, just receiving the 51% needed to avoid a runoff. The GOP didn't even bother to put up a candidate that year, even as Republican Bob Martinez narrowly carried the 2nd district for Governor (then only the 2nd Republican to win after Claude Kirk since Reconstruction). Grant started off as a moderate to liberal (1987-25% ACU) member, and then dramatically moved to the right, earning an 81% in 1989. Barone couldn't quite fathom why he did it, as it was very risky to do in a Tallahassee-based seat (which still remains 'Rat), but thought it was out of convictions, explaining his low '87 rating that he was trying to be accommodating to his fellow 'Rats but grew tired of it. He figured if Andy Ireland, another Democrat who switched parties in FL not long before, he could, too. But Ireland had been in office almost a decade. Other Conservative Democrats could've gotten away with it, like Earl Hutto in the 1st or Charles Bennett in the 3rd, but not Grant. Running for reelection in 1990 (he had also been unopposed as a 'Rat in '88) to his third term, the 'Rats ran ex-POW Pete Peterson, and despite outspending him by over 2-to-1, Grant lost by a 14% margin (it was said, he never quite established close links with his constituents, and the situation in Washington with the budget mess a month before didn't help Grant, either). Ironically, we almost picked up the Hutto seat in the adjacent 1st, as he barely won reelection by a 4% margin (and that GOP candidate, unlike Grant, was utterly ignored by the state party). Barone sent a not-so-secret message to Hutto in his book that his best bet after '92 was to switch parties so his slim percentages would rise, but he retired instead and the seat went to Joe Scarborough. Anyway, getting back to Grant, his last hurrah came in 1992 when he decided to run against Bob Graham, who was running for his second term. Embarrassing would be the word to describe the campaign. Grant was revealed to have had 106 overdrafts in the House check-kiting scandal (quite a number for having only been in Congress 4 years) and raised practically no money. Grant had also been a big cheerleader for trying to get Graham to be Dukakis's running mate in 1988, and of course, his erratic voting record didn't help, either. Even as Bush, Sr. won Florida, Grant lost by a 2-to-1 margin and was outspent 14-to-1. I haven't a clue what he's doing these days... Well, I hope that answers your questions.
--- Clemenza, resident of Boca Raton (1990-1994) and Miami (1999-2002)
"Thanks for all of the info. Just one question: What happened to Penallas County? Did conservatives just pack up and leave?"
"Damn, you are a wealth of information about Florida poltics. What I would like to know is, what happened to the conservatives who used to live in Broward County before the Condo Communists took over in the early 1970s? Did they like disappear into a canal near the Turnpike or something?"
Pinellas County, along with the counties that make up the Gold Coast (centered on Broward & Palm Beach Cos.) initially attracted a lot of older, white-collar, midwestern (think IL suburbanites) and northeastern (think NJ suburbanites) folks (some with wealth, though many middle class) who brought their voting habits down with them and made these areas (Pinellas was about the earliest) Republican in the '50s and early '60s (initially replacing the old rural Conservative Democrats that had been there since time immemorial). However, within 20 years, a lot of the old Yankee Republicans started dying off, and began to become outnumbered by more blue-collar and service-industry types (in Pinellas) and hardcore New Yorker Jewish Democrats in the condos (almost as if all of the NY Congressional districts that were lost since the '50s in Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Queens just packed up and moved to the Gold Coast). If those New Yorkers had stayed put, people like Wexler and Deutsch would be Congressmen from Brooklyn. Add to that a lot of immigrants (aside from the Cubans) who haven't been entirely hospitable to the GOP. While the Pinellas County Congressional district remains largely within its boundaries in the past few decades, the Gold Coast districts increased in number (where there were once only about 2 or 3 Congressional districts in the early '60s, now has about 8 or 9 in the area from Dade up to Palm Beach). If it wasn't for the Cubans, who replaced the near-vanished old-timer GOP voter or the personal appeal of Clay Shaw or Mark Foley (who has more links to the old-time 'Rat Paul Rogers) to 'Rat voters, there would be no GOP Congressmembers in that area of the state at all. It must be noted, though, that even as the old timers were being replaced, some of those 'Rat-trending districts still kept voting GOP at the Presidential level (a lot of disgruntled Jews in the '80 election, for example, gave Reagan percentages that made the districts look as though they had returned to their previous heavy-GOP voting patterns despite the gigantic demographic shift). By the '90s, though, the seats pretty much voted at the Presidential level the same as their Congressmembers' party (with some exceptions, like in Clay Shaw's pre-2002 seat). We're definitely going to have a tough time holding Bill Young's seat when he retires, that is almost certain, after 50 years next year, to go to the 'Rats (although it isn't utterly impossible for us to hold it). As to the descendents of those initial GOP "settlers", I might add, many are still Republican today, but that they have moved to other places in the state (take a look at how Republican the West Coast of FL is exclusive of St. Pete !). Orlando, BTW, is the next victim. That was a heavily GOP enclave, but with non-Cuban Hispanics coming in en masse to work in the service industry, the I-4 corridor is becoming uncomfortably "competitive" after being in the bag for us since the '60s. The GOP legislature had to draw a 'few Rat seats there (succeeding formerly GOP ones) in the most recent reapportionment. That area demonstrates why we've got to continue to have outreach to non-Cuban Hispanics (we were successful with a Mexican 'Rat legislator who switched parties and almost held a GOP-to-redrawn 'Rat seat for us). If the Jewish alignment ever really does occur, it will be very interesting to see who sits in those Gold Coast districts 15 years from now, it might be like the '50s for the GOP all over again... Hope this answers your questions !
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