Where are the BIG IDEAS from Jeb's Opponents?

Miami Herald editorial quoted | April 10, 2002 | summer

[summer]

Where are the Big Ideas from Jeb's Opponents?

Written by summer -- a former Dem, now an independent, and a FL certified teacher

Lately I see lots of negative press about Gov. Bush from his Dem opponents. They like to shout and criticize. OK, I got that. They think it's "Hate-Jeb" time here in the State of Florida.

But the question I always come back to is this:

Where are the Big Ideas from them?

Why should any FL independent voter, including me, ever consider voting for Reno or McBride?

I look at McBride's web site and can only learn that: "McBride is on YOUR side."


Whatever "YOUR" side happens to be, well, McBride is there.

He's on it.

He's with YOU. WHOEVER you are. (And you….and you, too.)

He is so much on everyone's "side" that he doesn't bother having any link on his web site to the issues in Florida -- and his position on the issues. Who needs to know THAT? All YOU need to know, if you are a FL voter, is that he's on "YOUR" side.

I also look at Reno's website -- and she seems to be on Jay Leno's side.


Janet Reno: Jay, I love being on your tv show THIS much.

Well, that's nice, but what where is her link to Florida's issues? Where are her BIG IDEAS? Where are her positions on the issues?

No need for that. One photo of her and Jay, and a FL voter is supposed to know that she's the right choice.

But then I look at Gov. Bush's web site, at www.jeb.org. He is the only one - the only one - who speaks to FL VOTERS. He is the one candidate for governor who bothered to post a link to: the ISSUES. He is the only one willing to say he is FOR this and he has DONE that.

True, Gov. Bush doesn't have a photo of him and Jay Leno. And, true, he doesn't have a meaningless saying like "on YOUR side. "

Gov. Bush and his team created a web site that deals with the ISSUES of Florida and his record as GOVERNOR. The BIG IDEAS. That's what I can find on this candidate's web site.

I realize: Not every voter in this state agrees with Gov. Bush on every issue.

However, at least he KNOWS the issues -- unlike Ms. Reno, whom I have yet to hear speak in specifics about ANY issue in this state.

And, at least he has a specific position on every issue -- unlike the ON "YOUR" SIDE McBride.

Until Reno and McBride start making a minimal attempt to engage voters on the issues - and start presenting some BIG IDEAS -- I seen no reason for any independent or swing voter who currently supports Gov. Bush to switch to Dem candidates.

With respect to these Dem candidates, I have to agree with the following headline:

Miami Herald -- April 10, 2002

Candidates clueless on Floridians' priorities

Commentary by MICHAEL PUTNEY

The Democrats seem … befuddled... I recently asked Janet Reno whether she supports Sen. John McKay's plan to remove the most egregious sales-tax exemptions; she said she didn't know which ones. But she's sure in favor of paying teachers more and lowering class size. So, how would she pay for it? She practically said: Don't know, the budget's just too complex, send me to Tallahassee, and I'll figure it out.

And Bill McBride? He'd just spend whatever is needed for a really good education system and figure out what to do about other state needs later.

For all the media coverage these two Dem candidates are receiving in Florida, I am amazed they think they can win a governor's race without ever coming up with any BIG IDEAS.

Because that's the side I am on: BIG IDEAS.

And, that side is obviously voting for: our current governor…and Just Read, Florida!, Economic Development for Rural Florida, Environmental programs like Florida Forever and Everglades Restoration, A+ Plan for Education, One Florida, Three Strikes Law, Hi-Tech Florida, International Trade Missions, Front Porch Florida, etc., etc., etc.

Jeb is the Big Idea candidate.

And, obviously, the Big Idea candidate is the one who deserves to win it in November.


Jeb Bush: Florida's current and future governor,
visiting a FL Teacher of the Year.

[summer]

I find myself tuning out more and more to this FL governor's race because of the total lack of any meaningful solution, idea or debate from those who oppose Gov. Bush.

[abclily]

The FL dems sound like the hippies who wanted to bring down the establishment, but had nothing to replace it with.

[FryingPan101]

My brother lives in Florida. He told me there will be no ideas, big or otherwise, coming from the Dems. He was told the Dems will rely on the usual slander to try to unseat Jeb and beat others.

[summer]

Yes, the "usual slander" is all I have seen from the Dem candidates in FL. And, it is very boring. FL voters have heard all this before.

If that is all they can come up with, then they DESERVE to lose in a VERY BIG way. And, I hope they do. Because I feel like all they do is waste time saying: Nothing. (Oh yeah - except that McBride is on "MY" side. And Reno can be seen on Jay Leno's side. Big deal!)

[summer]

The FL dems sound like the hippies who wanted to bring down the establishment, but had nothing to replace it with.

And, now they're aging hippies. Gov. Bush is the youngest candidate, and looks to also be the healthiest and fittest candidate in the race. These other candidates look horrible next to him.

[paddles]

At least Pete Peterson recognized that there really wasn't any issue he could take into a race against Jeb and did the manly thing and dropped out last Fall.

As a former Marine and combat vet McBride should do the same thing.

[summer]

I wonder if they read FR.

McBride, Reno promise to detail their priorities

By Mark Silva
Orlando Sentinel Political Editor
Posted April 12, 2002

Seven months from Election Day, the two leading Democratic candidates for governor have advanced neither a compelling new program nor any clearly defined reason for Florida voters to elect them.

Janet Reno, the former U.S. attorney general and clear front-runner in Democratic opinion polls, vows to make improving public education her highest priority.

Bill McBride, a Tampa-area attorney making his first bid for public office, pledges to find the financial resources necessary to make Florida's schools excel.

But, to the surprise of political observers who expect platforms from people who aspire to the Governor's Office, neither Reno nor McBride has explained how the state can pay for anything either has promised.

McBride promises to start talking about specifics today in Orlando, outlining a plan for education that will identify some "revenue sources."

As they arrive for the Democratic Party's state conference opening tonight in Orlando, they will face activists eager to hear how Democrats can unseat well-financed Republican Gov. Jeb Bush in November.

Leading and lesser-known candidates will appear this weekend alongside a preview of potential candidates for president in 2004: former Vice President Al Gore; Connecticut Sens. Joe Lieberman and Christopher Dodd; North Carolina Sen. John Edwards; and Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry.

Reno and McBride pledge to provide details. Until now, both have tried to make "leadership" the beacon of their campaigns, presenting their experiences as appealing alternatives to the leadership Bush has offered since election in 1998.

"Their entire campaigns are based on platitudes . . . and developing an image that 'We care, and Jeb Bush doesn't,'" Florida pollster Jim Kane said.

"That is not going to fly. It is not going to get them to the finish line with Jeb Bush. For whatever people say of him, he is a detail kind of governor."

Bush has a substantial record, ranging from passage of his "A-Plus" plan, which grades schools on student performance, to his abolishing affirmative action in state-university admissions.

Some of this he proposed as a candidate: His A-Plus plan, with financial rewards for top-achieving schools and state-paid tuition to private schools for children in failing public schools, is a mirror image of his 1998 campaign plan.

Some initiatives are ones he unveiled as governor: With his "One Florida" order, replacing affirmative action with guaranteed state-university admission for the top 20 percent of high-school graduates, Bush surprised many in Tallahassee.

No plans of their own yet

Bush's record offers ample fodder for campaign debate. So far, rather than advancing their own plans, Reno and McBride have challenged the governor's.

Both McBride, who opened his campaign in July, and Reno, who opened hers after Labor Day, have left themselves vulnerable to the not-so-playful criticism of a Republican Party chairman who rolls out a children's game, Where's Waldo?

"I've never seen, eight months into the process, a governor's election with as little substance as this one," said Al Cardenas, Florida GOP chairman.

Cardenas expects more of the same, a massive campaign against Bush this fall financed by a Democratic National Committee intent on bashing the governor's brother, George W. Bush, in a dry run for the presidential election of 2004.

"This will be anti-Jeb Bush campaign," said Cardenas, predicting that Floridians will see "Janet Reno sitting on her front porch or Bill McBride breeding his puppies" while the Democratic Party spends its money "trashing Jeb Bush."

The statewide-tour tactic

Reno's "red-truck tour" of Florida from Feb. 26 to March 12 marked the actual start of her campaign, manager Mo Elleithee maintained. The campaign's platform will follow.

"You heard Janet begin to lay out the themes of her campaign, talking about education and health care and the broader theme of bringing new leadership to Tallahassee," Elleithee said. "She has let people know what her priorities are."

As election gimmicks go, the red truck is straight from the Florida Democratic playbook.

The late Lawton Chiles walked his way into the U.S. Senate in 1970 with a 1,000-mile trek across Florida. A Miami Lakes millionaire named Bob Graham made himself the working man's hero with 100 days of labor in his 1978 campaign for governor.

Long before he became Florida's senior U.S. senator, Graham bellhopped at an Orlando hotel, went sponge fishing at Tarpon Springs and shoveled horse manure in Ocala.

'Education is the issue'

But gimmicks alone, observers say, will not unseat a governor who enjoys widespread job approval and happens to be the president's younger brother.

"I don't think anybody can beat Jeb Bush on the leadership issue," said Kane, whose polling identifies education as the runaway concern for voters.

"They need to grab on to something, and clearly education is the issue," he said.

Reno has talked about limiting classes to 15 children in the earliest grades. After she combs through the state's budget and sets priorities right, she said, she is willing to wage a "town-hall" campaign throughout the state to muster support for the money needed. But she hasn't proposed a figure, or a tax to pay for it.

McBride, who has support from labor unions, touts the "living wage" he established at the law firm he ran. Holland & Knight, Florida's largest law firm, pays its lowest-paid workers at least $12 an hour. But he hasn't proposed requiring that either state government or industry do the same.

"We'll get into more specifics," said Robin Rorapaugh, his campaign manager. As McBride outlines an education plan today at Orlando's Tiger Bay Club luncheon, she promised "he will be identifying some revenue sources."

In the primary contest, she maintained, "The differences have a lot to do with who they are, what their background is. This is going to be between he and Reno as much as what they see are the priorities."

McBride, a private citizen, likens his challenge to that of Reubin Askew, a little-known Pensacola legislator elected governor in 1970. But Askew campaigned with a plan to tax corporations, won voter approval of a corporate income tax as governor and beat the argument that the tax would harm consumers.

Askew bought work shirts in Georgia, which had such a tax, and Florida, which didn't.

"Governor Askew used the example of the two Sears shirts purchased in Florida and Georgia to illustrate the merits of his proposal," said Jim Bacchus, a former Askew speechwriter and now chief World Trade Organization judge in Geneva. "The price was the same in both states, but Sears was contributing to the future of Georgia but not to the future of Florida."

Campaigns shrug off ridicule

The Reno and McBride campaigns have taken Republican ridicule about details in stride.

"We will make it very clear that Janet Reno is going to take a very different approach," Elleithee said. "What we are seeing from the other side is that they are starting to get a little nervous. . . . They have a very tough record to defend. They are trying to deflect attention from that in the beginning by going on the offensive."

Cardenas mailed letters March 30 to more than 1,000 Reno and McBride financial supporters: "There is a popular children's game that you probably played growing up called Where's Waldo? . . . Like Waldo, it appears as though Janet Reno" -- or McBride, in letters to his backers -- "may be playing a hide-and-seek game of sorts."

Calling the Where's Waldo ploy "Republican dribble," McBride's Rorapaugh said: "If they are whining . . . that means we are on the right course."

[summer]

I thought these photos might inspire you sometime...

[summer]

At least Pete Peterson recognized that there really wasn't any issue he could take into a race against Jeb and did the manly thing and dropped out last Fall.

McBride sounds like he has too much of an ego to do this, as according to one article I read about him, despite the fact he has NEVER held a political office, he makes it absolutely clear that the Lt Gov position is NOT one that is acceptable to him. I guess LEARNING does not appeal to him.

As for Pete Peterson -- I think he did something good for FL, by agreeing to meet with Gov. Bush when Gov. Bush invited him to, and then serving on FL's new domestic security commission at the request of Gov. Bush. To me, Peterson, having just returned from Vietnam, could not possibly have known enough about FL to effectively run for governor at this time, and his moves upon his return may have resulted in a lot goodwill for him among conservative voters who sometimes vote Dem. And, Gov. Bush and his office had only nice things to say about Peterson, pleasing Dems who like both Peterson and Bush.

So, I think someday, down the road, Peterson may be an effective candidate if he decides to run for office. He has that crossover appeal, and maybe he's built it up. (Of course, the Dems at DU now berate him and curse him out for working WITH Gov. Bush to serve the people of FL. Go figure! )