NewsMax.com
Monday, March 8, 2004

Florida's 27 electoral votes are the focus of a fierce battle heating up between Democrats and Republicans, just like four years ago.

The fight is part of a war between the parties that dates back to the 2000 presidential election when Democrats lost by a hair and have been seething about ever since.

In 2002, led by their foundering national chairman, Terry McAuliffe, Democrats targeted Florida as a must win. They spent huge sums in an effort to defeat Gov. Jeb Bush and went down to a humiliating defeat made all the worse by McAuliffe's pre-election boasts of certain victory. Bush crushed his Democrat opponent, and his party strengthened its hold on both houses of the state Legislature and won all major statewide offices.

But those losses have only strengthened the Democrats' determination to reverse the tide and carry Florida, widely regarded as a state they must carry to defeat President Bush in November.

Here Come the Lawyers, Already

Sen. John Kerry, campaigning today in Broward County, threatened to mount an early legal challenge in any district that posed problems for him.

"Not only do we want a record level of turnout to vote, we want to guarantee that every vote is counted," he told about 500 people at a meeting in Hollywood. He didn't say if he would, like Al Gore in 2000, try to keep servicemen's votes from being counted.

Kerry said his campaign was already assembling a legal team to examine districts that had problems in 2000. In the most notorious case, thousands of Democrat voters in Palm Beach County, trying to throw the election to Gore, claimed to be too stupid to use a Democrat-designed ballot.

'Pre-challenge'

"We're going to precheck it. We're going to have the legal team in place. ... We're going to take injunctions where necessary ahead of time. We'll pre-challenge if necessary," the senator said.

According to today's New York Times:

Democrats are again targeting voting blocks such as Hispanics and blacks. Groups affiliated with the party have started going after swing voters with television advertising, door-to-door appeals and voter registration drives. Such groups, called 527 committees, can spend unlimited contributions on advertising and turning out voters.

Some of the groups zero in on specific issues. One such group, Environment 2004, was formed to attack President Bush's environmental policies. Other groups such as New Democratic Network, put together to support "centrist" Democrats, plan broader approaches on selling their non-centrist nominee.

"The Bush campaign is going to be spending millions on advertising," Maria Cardona, a vice president of New Democratic Network, told the Times. "And this traditionally has not been a priority for Democrats until maybe three weeks before the election."

Her group will run anti-Bush and pro-Democrat advertisements in Orlando, Tampa and West Palm Beach.

Other 527 groups, and the party itself, will target swing voters in the Panhandle and black voters throughout northern Florida. Democrats admit they neglected these groups in 2000.

Kerry, before going to south Florida, campaigned today in Orlando, a crucial area of swing voters that was his first stop of the general campaign season, and dredged up the Democrat myth of a "stolen" 2000 election.

Republicans are focusing on the same crucial Interstate 4 corridor from Tampa Bay to Orlando to Daytona Beach. The Bush campaign is spending $900,000 for its first television advertising blitz here. That's more than twice as much as it is spending in any other state, according to the Times.

President Bush has kept a close eye on the state since he eked out his narrow 537-vote victory in 2000. He has visited Florida 19 times, most recently in Daytona Beach and Tampa to woo NASCAR dads and promote his tax cuts.

Both parties are going after "moderate" suburban voters not affiliated with either party, who for the most part voted for Gore four years ago. The Times quoted some experts as saying that group, being patriotic and somewhat fiscally conservative, would not find Kerry appealing.

"The only times national Democrats have done well in Florida were when they were Southerners," said professor Lance deHaven-Smith of Florida State University, citing Bill Clinton and Gore.

U.S. Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., said: "Kerry will have a hard time separating himself from the 'Taxachusetts' image and liberalism of his state. I'm not going to be bold enough to say we can sweep this thing. But the equation is looking pretty good for us."

In October the Bush campaign began training volunteers to campaign for the president in all 67 counties. By summer, they expect to have 3,000 trained workers and up to 70,000 additional volunteers going after swing voters through telephone calls, letters to the editor and block parties.

"We're well aware that Florida still has more Democrats than Republicans," said Geoffrey Becker, executive director of the Republican Party of Florida. "It's about talking to people, saying, `If you're not with us on this issue, let's find another set of issues we can work with you on.'"

Upsetting the GOP's narrow advantage in central Florida: the arrival of tens of thousands of Hispanic immigrants. They are not Cubans but Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and others who have come for work in tourism, agriculture and the service industry. Of vital political importance is a project, sponsored by Puerto Rico's government, that has registered 18,000 Puerto Rican voters in central Florida in the last seven months.

In 2000, Latinos in the Orlando area made Gore the first Democrat to win Orange County in a presidential election since 1948. But those same voters went heavily for Gov. Jeb Bush in 2002. The governor, who speaks fluent Spanish and has a Hispanic wife, is running his brother's re-election campaign in Florida and will go after Latino voters.

Mel Martinez, who stepped down as Bush's secretary of housing to run for the GOP nomination for the Senate seat vacated by Democrat Bob Graham, could give Republicans a boost if he does well in the primary.

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