The entire article is here. I'm amazed it appeared in the WP. Here are a few other tidbits:
. . . . He and his wife, a retired bank executive, used to file joint tax returns. Shortly before announcing his bid for governor, they switched to separate returns. As a result, McBride could claim the smallest net worth of any major candidate -- when for all practical purposes he is by far the richest.
McBride lives in a spacious house on 30 lakeside acres outside Tampa, in an area in which a comparable home recently listed for just under $1 million. But in a 1999 speech, McBride said, "I live in a poor area of my state. The only time many of my neighbors see a lawyer is when the lawyer is representing the mobile home park owner evicting them." . . . .
The aw-shucks aura is essential to McBride's canny strategy, which is to make the election all about Bush and never, ever, to let the focus swing around to him. . . .
McBride attacks Jeb Bush for cutting taxes too aggressively. He blames Bush for Florida's budget deficit. He reminds voters that Bush campaigned on promises to improve education and fix the state's troubled foster care system -- and insists that if Bush hasn't delivered results yet, there is no point giving him more time.
But when the subject shifts to his own plans, McBride remains stubbornly fuzzy. "There's no need for me to change what I've been doing," he tells reporters pressing him for position papers.
Take his second-most prominent issue, prescription drug coverage. McBride speaks so warmly about the travails of retirees struggling with rising drug costs that it's easy to miss his bottom line -- it's not a state problem. Though he ridicules Bush's proposal to provide $160 a month to help needy seniors pay for drugs, it is more concrete than McBride's plan, which is to lobby Congress to solve the problem.
On environmental issues, such as offshore oil drilling and Everglades restoration, McBride's positions appear to be the same as Bush's, though it is hard to tell because he often demurs when pressed on specifics.
There is nothing but danger in taking stands, campaign spokesman Alan Stonecipher suggests. Bush would simply use them to "attack Bill."