Analysis: Importance of Florida in presidential election debatable
By Brian E. Crowley, Palm Beach Post Political Editor
Monday, March 15, 2004
This may be blasphemy to Florida Democrats, but the Sunshine State could be less important than they think in this presidential election.
In fact, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry could abandon his campaign in the state later this year -- just as Bill Clinton did in 1992 -- to spread his limited resources to potentially more fertile political turf in the Midwest and Southwest. After all, the closest election in 2000 was not in Florida, where President Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes, but in New Mexico, where Gore won by 366 votes.
Even Kerry once suggested that Democrats could win the election without winning a single state in the South.
"Everybody makes the same mistake of 'Look South,' " Kerry told a New Hampshire audience in January. "Al Gore proved he could have been president of the United States without winning one Southern state, including his own."
Since then, Kerry has insisted he will campaign hard in the South, especially in Florida. As the soon-to-be Democratic nominee, he has made two trips here in the past two weeks, with stops in West Palm Beach, Delray Beach, Hollywood, Orlando and Tampa.
Still, there is a growing belief within the party that Florida is too expensive, too difficult and too time-consuming for Kerry to take the risk of betting the White House on Florida.
Some political observers even say Democrats should simply forget Florida and the rest of the South.
They argue that Kerry would be better off concentrating on the Southwest and the industrial Midwest, particularly Ohio -- where unemployment is high, unhappiness with the president growing and 21 electoral votes are at stake.
South 'no longer swing' area
Consider that Florida was one of 15 states where the 2000 margin of victory was 5 percent or less. Six cluster in the Midwest -- Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Missouri. Two are in the Southwest -- New Mexico and Nevada. But Arizona was almost as close; Bush won that state by only a 6 percent margin.
Maine, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, New Hampshire, Oregon and Washington round out the 15.
"Trying to recapture the South is a futile counterproductive exercise for Democrats because the South is no longer the swing region," wrote University of Maryland political science Professor Thomas Schaller for The Washington Post.
Schaller is slightly more optimistic about Florida, the most competitive southern state in 2000. But he concludes that Gov. Jeb Bush's 13 point reelection win in 2002, combined with GOP control of the legislature and the three elected Cabinet positions, makes the outlook gloomy for Democrats in Florida.
"The bitter truth is that the Florida recount was the Democrats' last stand in the South for the foreseeable future," Schaller wrote.
But Steve Jarding, one of the architects of Florida Sen. Bob Graham's presidential campaign, says, "It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of Florida. I think Florida is more important today than it was in 2000."
The reason is the math. It takes 270 electoral votes to win the White House. Since the last election, redistricting based on population fluctuations has changed the number of electoral votes in 17 states. Florida has gained two electoral votes, going from 25 to 27.
The shift in electoral votes means that the states that Bush won in 2000 now have seven more electoral votes, while those that Gore won have seven fewer. If each party were to win the same states this year that it won in 2000, Bush would have 278 electoral votes to Kerry's 260.
"No question," says Jarding, who is not working for Kerry. "Florida is the big dog."
He thinks Kerry has less of a chance of winning Ohio's 21 electoral votes than he does winning Florida's 27.
"Ohio is probably in play," says Jarding, who became a fellow at the Harvard Institute of Politics after leaving Graham's campaign in October, shortly before Graham dropped out. "But Bush beat a sitting vice president by 165,000 votes in Ohio."
With Bush and Gore only 537 votes apart in Florida four years ago, Jarding says it clearly makes more sense for Kerry to concentrate on the state where Democrats were closer to the prize.
"There is no scenario where you can ignore Florida," he says. "Florida is your ace for Kerry."
Mike Murphy, a Republican strategist who is not employed by Bush, thinks Kerry will try to compete in Florida for awhile, but then abandon the state for the Midwest.
"Florida is one of the top 10 targets, but Bush will win," says Murphy. He sees the race coming down to a contest in the Midwest. And he believes a lot will depend on the economy.
If the economy gets worse in Ohio and other Midwest states, Murphy says Kerry would have a better chance there. He expects Kerry to pick his running mate from that region -- either U.S. Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri or U.S. Sen. Evan Bayh of Indiana.
"All the hype about Florida obscures the fact that Democrats don't do very well there," Murphy says.
Florida has gone for Republicans in seven of the 10 elections since 1964, and the Republicans have won the presidency six of those seven times. Only Bill Clinton has won the national race after losing Florida; Clinton narrowly lost the state to President George H. W. Bush after abandoning it in the last weeks of the 1992 campaign to concentrate elsewhere.
Battle for state to heat up
Even the three times that Democrats won Florida can be explained away by Republicans. Lyndon Johnson won a landslide national election in 1964 against Barry Goldwater, who many voters thought was an extremist. Jimmy Carter defeated Gerald Ford in 1976 after Ford endured attacks from the GOP right led by Ronald Reagan. Carter, the governor of Georgia, also was helped by his status as a Southerner and the post-Watergate mood of voters who wanted a Washington outsider. And Clinton won in 1996, defeating Republican Bob Dole who ran an anemic campaign against the incumbent president.
Tally both parties' wins in Florida, and the state has been on the winning side in nine of the past 10 presidential elections.
So Bush is spending millions of dollars on television and radio ads here. Kerry is expected to start his ads soon. And both candidates will be here frequently in the coming months as each sizes up his chances of winning the Sunshine State.
For now at least, Floridians have a front-row seat. |
