NewsMax.com
Friday, Aug. 3, 2001

Confirming NewsMax.com's article Monday that predicted the same kind of outcome, a poll in Thursday's Miami Herald shows Reno would win big in a six-way Democrat primary race, getting a whopping 47 percent of the vote, and then lose to Jeb Bush with a mere 39 percent of the statewide vote.

The Mason-Dixon Florida poll of 625 registered voters had even more bad news for the former Clinton administration attorney general: Only 7 percent of those polled were undecided - an indication that votesd have already made up their minds about keeping Bush in the Governor's mansion in Tallahassee.

On Monday NewsMax reported that thanks to her huge advantage in name recognition, Reno would easily beat any of the reported Democrat gubernatorial hopefuls, but added that because of her large nunmber of negatives she would face almost certain defeat in a race against Bush.

Even worse for Reno was the fact that the poll showed that more Floridians disliked her - 37 percent - than liked her - 32 percent.

Moreover, Reno could expect that Bush, in a Bush/Reno race, could attract 26 percent of the Democrat voters to his side and a huge 57 percent of the state's independent voters as well.

Reno, however, could win a measly 8 percent of the GOP vote and would go down to humiliating defeat in conservative northern Florida, getting only to 28 percent of the vote to Bush's 64 percent.

``All the numbers suggest she'd pull the core Democrats, but not the swing voters a Democrat needs to win in Florida,'' pollster Brad Coker told the Herald. ``You need to not get killed in North Florida, and the numbers don't suggest she has the potential to do that.

``If you bring in Reno, you bring in some positive things like name recognition, but she has baggage that no one else has,'' Coker said.

What was bad news for Reno, however, was better news for Democrats reported to be thinking about throwing their hats in the ring. In races against former Rep. Pete Peterson and Rep. Jim Davis, Bush's margin drops to just below 50 percent. The number of undecided voters triples to almost 20 percent.

``That 15 points Bush has over Reno is much more formidable than the 16 to 18 that he has over Davis and Peterson because they are unknown to over half of the voters,'' Coker told the Herald. ``She's already been defined, but the potential is there for Peterson or Davis to close into single digits if they can up their name recognition. If I were a strategist for either candidate, I would tell them this is a doable race.

``No one's going to ask Pete Peterson about Waco; no one's going to ask Jim Davis about appointing special prosecutors,'' Coker said.

Neither state House minority leader Lois Frankel - an announced candidate - nor potential candidates Sen. Daryl Jones of Miami and Tampa attorney Bill McBride fared well against Gov. Bush, who stays above the magical 50 percent of the vote against any of the three.

Reno told the Herald that the new poll confirmed the conventional wisdom she would win the primary and have a rough row to hoe in the general election.

``I've always said this would be a very challenging race,'' she said. ``But it doesn't mean anyone isn't going to have a hard race."

Bush campaign manager Karen Unger told the Herald that the poll was an indication of the governor's strong popularity ratings - ``particularly given the barrage of attacks leveled by the Democrats and covered almost daily by the media.''

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:
Janet Reno
Clinton Scandals
Waco

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