This should give Kerry a little help in Florida. People making minimum wage are going to get to vote in favor of getting a pay raise. While they are there, hopefully they will also cast a vote for president:
Tony Hill calls it "the silver bullet" for Florida Democrats.
Could it also be John Kerry's secret weapon?
It is Amendment 5, a proposal to increase the minimum wage Florida by $1, to $6.15 an hour, and tie annual increases to inflation. It will be on the Nov. 2 ballot as a constitutional amendment.
Democrats see it as a way to help the working poor while driving thousands of liberal voters to the polls at the same time.
Do the math, and the politics.
For a struggling single mother working a cash register in a convenience store, it's a pay raise of $40 a week.
For Kerry, it could mean another vote from someone who might otherwise stay home on Election Day.
The prospect of a raise might do it.
"This is a kitchen table issue," says Hill, a Jacksonville Democratic state senator.
Gov. Jeb Bush repeatedly cites Florida's job growth as the best of any state, with a gain of 172,000 jobs in the 12 months before May 2004. Florida's unemployment rate consistently ranks below the national average, and the tax-subsidized Scripps Research Institute could produce thousands of high-paying jobs.
But it's also true that Florida's wages lag behind other states. Florida is filled with poor people working at low-paying jobs with little hope of advancement.
Supporters of a higher minimum wage, led by the umbrella reform group known as ACORN, raised $1-million to pay signature-gatherers to get the issue on the ballot. Most of the money came from unions and trial lawyers, groups that contend working people are suffering under President Bush and want to drive him from office.
To get its half-million signatures, ACORN registered a lot of poor and disaffected voters. Now, ACORN will make sure those voters get to the polls Nov. 2.
Brian Kettenring, ACORN's chief organizer in Florida, is succinct about the larger goal of the minimum wage amendment.
"It's a strategy to bring the voices of working families into the election," Kettenring says.
Kerry has endorsed Amendment 5, but President Bush has not taken a position. Gov. Bush opposes it.
To understand the importance of this issue to Democrats, look no further than John Edwards, whose "two Americas" theme you'll be hearing over and over in the next three months.
"We have millions of Americans who work full-time every day, for minimum wage, to support their families and still live in poverty. It's wrong," Edwards said in his acceptance speech Wednesday night at the Fleet Center in Boston. "We will raise the minimum wage."
Accepting the presidential nomination Thursday night, Sen. John Kerry said: "Wages are falling. People are working two jobs, three jobs, and they're still not getting ahead."
The list of supporters of the Floridians for All PAC, based in St. Petersburg, reads like a who's who of Democratic donors. And come to think of it, they oppose the Bush brothers and their policies.
The National Education Association, parent of the Florida teachers' union, made the single biggest contribution ($250,000) to Floridians for All. AFSCME, the nation's largest public employee union, gave $100,000. The Tampa office of Morgan Colling & Gilbert contributed $50,000.
Money flowed to St. Petersburg from out of state, too. The Tides Foundation, a non-profit San Francisco group that supports living-wage campaigns in many states, gave $75,000.
Now ACORN must raise money to counteract an effort expected by retailers and restaurants to defeat Amendment 5.
Over breakfast with Florida delegates to the Democratic National Convention Thursday, Monica Russo, a union leader, held up a $1 bill.
"Can you send your kids to college on five dollars an hour?" Russo asked. "Amendment 5 will change that."
Steve Bousquet is the Times' deputy capital bureau chief.
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