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| | | Floridians tell stories of Governor Bush’s personal impact in their lives.
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Wednesday, November 6, 2002
Palm Beach Post
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Governor's victory leads GOP romp
By Brian E. Crowley and Marc Caputo
MIAMI -- Gov. Jeb Bush clobbered Bill McBride Tuesday, destroying the campaign of the Democratic nominee by not only winning Republican strongholds but also defeating him in counties the GOP rarely wins.
Republicans kept the governor's office, captured all three state Cabinet seats, retained control of the Florida Legislature and gained three seats in Congress, making the GOP the overwhelmingly dominant political force in the state.
They even defeated Attorney General Bob Butterworth, one of the state's top Democrats and once considered a front-runner for the party's gubernatorial nomination, for a state Senate seat in Palm Beach and Broward counties.
Democrats were reduced to a minor, struggling state party that can find solace only in the fact that it still holds Florida's two U.S. Senate seats -- neither of which was on the ballot this year.
With 96 percent of the vote counted, Bush led 56 percent to McBride's 43 percent. CNN called the race for Bush at 8:20 p.m.
"I want to thank my almighty God," Bush said moments after McBride conceded defeat.
Bush praised McBride for running "a hard race," and told a cheering crowd at the Miami Renaissance Hotel the he "looks forward to working with him to build a better Florida."
McBride, wearing the lucky election tie once worn by the late Gov. Lawton Chiles, who never lost a race, said he was proud he forced Bush to talk about improving education and promised to work with Bush to make it happen.
When the crowd, many with tears in their eyes, booed Bush, McBride told them to stop. "Think big," he said.
Bush picked up where his campaign left off, talking of the need to strengthen families, to make sure every child learns to read and to protect single mothers struggling to get by.
"We need to lessen the abuses of domestic violence, we need to protect the developmentally disabled. We need to create a climate in this state that is the envy of the rest of the country about how families can grow and prosper together," Bush said.
"I am so grateful for your support and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. I will not let you down. I will work as hard as I can."
"How sweet it is," said State GOP Chairman Al Cardenas, calling the election "the greatest event in the history of the Republican Party of Florida."
Cardenas ticked off the offices -- governor, attorney general, agriculture commissioner, chief financial officer: "Ladies and gentlemen, that's a clean sweep."
Call from the president
As the early results came in, Bush gathered with his parents in an 18th-floor suite of the Renaissance Hotel.
In front of him, five televisions were tuned to different channels, the sound turned low. His two sons, Jeb Jr. and George P., sat with their girlfriends on a couch and made small talk.
The Bush campaign would allow only a single pool reporter in the room.
The governor huddled in front of a laptop computer, constantly hitting the refresh button to get the most current election totals online.
Jim Towey, head of the White House's faith-based programs department, was nearby. He was reading out the 2000 election totals by county for the governor's brother, the president of the United States.
The phone rang. On the other line was the president, monitoring the election from Washington. He congratulated the governor.
Their father, former President George Bush, proudly took it all in. But in listening to one of the stations, he couldn't make head or tails of what was said.
"What's that?" he asked.
"It's Univision," the governor said, referring to the Spanish language station.
After the results from Pasco County came in -- a county usually won by Democrats, Bush knew he had won the race. The governor kept analyzing the data, measuring the brotherly competition by way of votes.
"Wow, we're doing better than George," the governor said of his brother's 2000 election totals, where he won the state by a mere 537 votes.
"Does that mean you're better than George?" Barbara Bush prodded.
"No," the governor said. "It means we're using him as a benchmark."
The only dark spot in the vote tallies: the class size-reduction initiative the governor campaigned against narrowly won approval.
Considering he had indicated that he might have to raise taxes to pay for it, a reporter asked Bush whether he was upset.
"Not tonight," he replied. "There'll be time to be bummed-out later."
As early votes counts began coming in, it was clear that McBride was in trouble. Bush was winning, Flagler and Monroe counties -- also areas that normally vote Democratic.
McBride also was losing Orange County, which had gone to Al Gore in 2000. Bush won nearly every county in the Interstate 4 corridor from Tampa to Daytona Beach and most counties in North Florida.
Bush also was winning Miami-Dade County and losing Broward and Palm Beach counties by far smaller margins than Republicans normally do.
"It's been a difficult night, there is no question about it," said Bob Poe, chairman of the state Democratic Party. "We obviously have a lot of work to do."
Powerful political machine
McBride had been the candidate that Bush feared most but in the end, McBride proved that he was simply no match against a candidate in his third race for governor backed by a political machine more powerful than any other in Florida's history.
Republicans spent more than $40 million -- an unprecedented amount -- electing their candidates, with the vast majority of the cash going toward Bush's reelection.
The Democratic challenger also was up against the White House political machine, which was determined not just to help the president's younger brother because he is family but because Florida is vital to George W. Bush's reelection in 2004.
A McBride win would have signaled deep trouble for President Bush.
National political heavyweights weighed in. President Bush visited the state a dozen times. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani came, too. Former President Bill Clinton campaigned during the final week. Gore stumped, too.
Jeb Bush had been so worried about McBride that for the first time in the Sunshine State, the Republican Party began running ads against McBride in the Democratic primary last summer in an effort to help former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno defeat McBride.
That plan backfired, but once McBride won the nomination, his campaign was ill-prepared to take on Bush.
McBride simply could not match Bush's successful strategy of turning the issue of education -- the one issue Democrats believed was the key to success -- into a referendum on whether voters wanted their taxes raised.
McBride never knew what hit him. The Tampa lawyer and political novice, backed by a general election campaign team with little experience in Florida politics, was knocked off stride in the final weeks of the campaign by blistering attacks from Bush, who told voters that if McBride became governor he would pick their wallets with new taxes.
Throughout the year, Bush worried about being clobbered over education. His strategists knew that anger over FCAT testing, grading of public schools and an overall sense that Florida's students were not measuring up to national standards, was turning into an issue that could cost him reelection.
In April, Bush went on the air with the first political commercials of the campaign -- a warm look at Bush with kids in a classroom and several teachers praising him for helping schools.
Mike Murphy, Bush's media strategist said that the ads were intended to improve Bush's image and portray him as caring education leader and more importantly, take some of the edge off Democratic charges that Bush was doing education more harm than good.
Bush also was haunted by the class-size amendment. Were McBride able to convince voters that he was the better education governor, supporters of the amendment would be likely to support him.
Bush, who frequently reminds crowds that he does "what I think is right. Not what I think is popular," said that he decided to take on the class-size initiative regardless of the political fallout.
"It's the big gorilla in the room. Do you just sit back and do the Curly Shuffle?" Bush said, referring to the comical sidestepping of one of the Three Stooges.
Early on, Bush said it would make way for too many unqualified teachers, would stuff kids in portable classrooms and, most significantly, would raise taxes. Bush put the price tag at $29 billion.
Even fellow Republicans and Bush advisers thought the number was inflated. But they kept quiet. It served a vital campaign purpose, acting like a piece of bait to entice McBride to publicly estimate the cost.
McBride wasn't biting. And it was paying off. Opinion showed he was moving closer and closer to Bush despite the governor's mantra that the Democrat was only making "vague, empty promises."
Then came Tim Russert. The host of NBC's Meet The Press moderated the final of three debates between the two on Oct. 22 and pinned down McBride, who had dodged and ducked reporters when they asked him about how to pay for smaller class sizes and higher teacher pay.
McBride tried to do the same with Russert, saying "the governor picks numbers that scare people." He also made mention of the fact that Bush had been unwittingly recorded in a candid moment where he said he had "devious plans" to derail the class-size initiative if supported by voters. The statement became advertising fodder for McBride.
But Russet stayed after him, asking whether McBride would pick the $29 billion of Bush or the $8 billion mentioned by the initiative's supporters.
"I think it's somewhere in between," said McBride, as Bush's supporters squealed with laughter.
That was all Bush needed. At every campaign stop, Bush asked "How many of y'all saw the debates?" A cheer would go up each time.
Polls showed that McBride was beginning to crumble. Voters still did not know him well enough to be sure that he would not raise their taxes and in the end, they were not willing to take that chance.
There was one final victory for the GOP Tuesday. Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan, a widow, announced his engagement to Courtney Strickland, a third-year law student at Florida State University and former aide to former House Speaker John Thrasher.
"Brogan used to always come by my office," Thrasher recalled Tuesday. "I always thought he was coming to see me."
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 | | | | From Teachers to Veterans, a diverse group of Floridians have endorsed Jeb Bush for Governor, and for good reason.
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