2004 Already Shaping Up as a Rerun of Florida Feud

Even as media ballot recounts of the disputed 2000 presidential result continue, Florida is emerging as the cornerstone of early White House planning to win President Bush’s reelection in 2004.

Some of his top strategists believe that Florida is to Bush what California was to Bill Clinton: the one state the White House must lock down if the president is to win a second term. “I think it is the indispensable state,” says Matthew Dowd, a top political advisor to Bush. “Unless something weird happens, I don’t know how you win without Florida.”

Indeed, both Republicans and Democrats now see Florida as the pivotal battleground on an electoral map divided almost evenly between the two sides--the single state most likely to pick the winner if the presidential race is close next time. “It wouldn’t surprise me if there were more resources spent four years from now in Florida per electoral vote than any other state in the country,” says Michael Whouley, the Democratic National Committee’s executive director during the 2000 campaign.

This consensus about Florida’s key role guarantees enormous attention to the state through the 2004 vote. While he has not yet traveled to California, for instance, Bush already has visited Florida twice--and is scheduled to return next week.

Local political observers also are seeing signs of Bush’s desire to court suburban Floridians: His budget, for instance, would provide a $40-million increase in funding to restore the Everglades--even as Bush seeks to impose reductions on other environmental programs.

In these and other ways, Bush is likely to lose few opportunities over the next four years to demonstrate concern for Florida--much as Clinton never spared a chance to sympathize with any flicker of pain in California. “The White House is doing exactly what they ought to do, which is make sure people in Florida know there is a relationship here,” says Florida GOP Chairman Al Cardenas.

Meanwhile, both parties are looking at Republican Gov. Jeb Bush’s likely reelection bid in 2002 the way the eventual combatants in World War II viewed the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s--as an opportunity to test the weapons they expect to use in the larger battle looming. “If the president’s brother can’t get reelected, then that sends a message,” insists Bob Poe, chairman of Florida’s Democratic Party.

A Delicate Balance of Power

Two distinct political trends have carried Florida to such a critical position.

The first is the precarious national balance of power. With Republicans dominating the South and the Mountain West, and Democrats seemingly entrenched in the Northeast, the West Coast and much of the upper Midwest, the two parties are as evenly matched in the electoral college as at any time in 100 years. Florida, which will award 27 electoral votes in 2004, is the largest prize not strongly leaning toward either side.

And even as the state has moved to the fulcrum of the national power balance, the political balance in Florida itself has become poised on a knife’s edge.

From 1968 through 1992, the Democratic presidential nominees averaged less than 38% of the vote in the state. But Clinton broke through to win decisively in 1996, and Al Gore battled Bush to a virtual draw here last time--even as Ralph Nader siphoned off nearly 97,000 voters through his Green Party candidacy.

Republicans still enjoy many advantages in Florida. Among them: a revivified commitment to the GOP from Cuban Americans (who had drifted toward Clinton in 1996) after the Elian Gonzalez debacle; the continued emergence of an increasingly affluent, socially conservative retiree population, many from the Midwest (Bush carried Florida seniors in 2000); overwhelming margins in the more rural, northern part of the state and a dominance among white male voters approaching the levels evident elsewhere in the South.

All of these factors should help Jeb Bush next year.

But two other broad trends have put Democrats back in the game. One is the growing tendency of white women here to base their votes (much as white women in northern suburban states like New Jersey do) on issues such as education and abortion--making them more likely to support Democrats. Bush still carried a majority of white women in Florida in 2000, but not by a lopsided enough margin to safely overcome the second factor helping Democrats: the growth in the state’s minority vote.

When Bush’s father won Florida in the 1988 presidential election, whites comprised 85% of the vote here, according to exit polls; by 2000, that number was down to 73%. It’s likely to be lower yet in 2004.

One reason for this drop was an intense Democratic effort to turn out African Americans, whose share of the vote soared to 15% in 2000 from 10% in 1996. The party believes--and Republicans fear--that anger over the disputed vote count in 2000 could guarantee another massive black turnout against Jeb Bush in 2002. “They were mad immediately after Nov. 7, and they are mad today and they are likely to continue to feel they were abused and mistreated,” says Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.).

In the long run, even more important may be the growth in the ranks of Latinos from countries other than Cuba. Although the census hasn’t released detailed figures, most demographers believe the growth among non-Cuban Latinos is driving most of the increase in the state’s Latino population, which rocketed from 12% in 1990 to 17% in 2000.

Exit polls showed that in the 2000 vote, these new arrivals outnumbered the Cuban American turnout. And in sharp contrast to the Cubans, the polling showed that these non-Cuban Latinos gave Gore most of their votes in 2000.

Charles Dusseau, the Democratic chairman in Miami-Dade County, says that, while Cuban American politics is still defined by the charge that Democrats are soft on Fidel Castro, these other Latino communities are behaving more like earlier generations of immigrants.

“The first-generation immigrants have traditionally been Democratic,” he notes. “They’ve been hard-working families who see government as the benefactor and not the enemy.”

To Republicans, the message from these trends is clear: “It means we need to do a better job of communicating with Hispanics,” says Orlando-based GOP consultant Tre Evers.

Electoral Reforms Likely in State

One wild card for both 2002 and 2004 is the likelihood that the Florida Legislature will approve electoral reforms requiring the replacement of punch-card ballots with more advanced optical scanning systems.

Those reforms would significantly reduce the number of ballots disqualified in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties--potentially swelling the Democratic majorities in three of the state’s most populous, and liberal-leaning, areas. Republicans hope to recoup some of those losses through the bill’s creation of a statewide voter registration file. That could reduce the number of ballots cast by ineligible voters, which the GOP maintains benefits Democrats.

In the approaching gubernatorial race, Florida’s two Democratic senators, Graham and Bill Nelson, have taken an unusually high-profile role in attempting to recruit--and unify the party behind--a strong candidate. Although they haven’t tipped their hand, insiders believe their preference is Pete Peterson, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam and three-term Democratic congressman from Tallahassee.

President Bush seems to share the view that Peterson might pose a threat to his brother and, by extension, his own hopes here in 2004. The president recently extended Peterson’s term as ambassador to Vietnam, which will--at least for now--keep him far away from Florida.