Harris’ Candidacy Is Considered Secure Despite Misstep

Even in the manner and timing of her exit as Florida’s secretary of state, Katherine Harris has become mired in controversy. But her admitted blunder will have little effect on her bid for Congress, political experts said Friday.

Harris, who issued the controversial decision handing Florida’s electoral votes in the 2000 presidential election to fellow Republican George W. Bush, is running for the U.S. House seat in a traditionally Republican patch of Florida’s Gulf Coast. She resigned her state position abruptly Thursday, saying she had misunderstood the very election laws she was supposed to administer.

“I should have read the law. I didn’t. I take full responsibility,” she told reporters at a tumultuous news conference in Tallahassee.

Harris said she erred by not tendering the formal resignation required of all state officeholders who seek federal office. It was another zany twist in the political career of the 45-year-old granddaughter of one of Florida’s wealthiest citrus and cattle barons.

“This is political theater of the absurd,” said Larry Sabato, a professor of government at the University of Virginia who is a well-known commentator on U.S. politics. “She is in charge of administering the election law, and she didn’t understand the law that she was administering. It’s that simple, really.”

Florida Democrats seized on Harris’ mistake, calling it proof that the official who always insisted she was enforcing the letter of the law was hardly so punctilious or evenhanded. “She obviously doesn’t know election law, which is one of the weightiest responsibilities of her office,” said Bob Poe, chairman of the Florida Democratic Party. “She fails to execute her responsibilities properly. She can’t even resign properly.”

But supporters say the resignation flap will leave no scar.

“She’s been so attacked by Democrats and vilified by her opponents in the last two years,” said Al Cardenas, chairman of the state’s Republican Party. “It’s had no effect, and in fact, rank-and-file voters are so accustomed to it that it’s almost like she’s built up a firewall against such attacks.”

Harris has been considered a shoo-in in the heavily Republican 13th Congressional District around Sarasota on Florida’s middle Gulf Coast, where she faces only one rival, a former television anchor, in the Sept. 10 primary. Four little-known Democrats are running in their party’s primary.

The incumbent, Republican Dan Miller, is not seeking reelection. “She’s still heavily favored in the district,” Sabato said.

James Witt, professor of government at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, agreed that, despite the latest controversy, Harris should win the November election handily.

Harris backdated her resignation as secretary of state to July 15 but confusingly began referring to herself as “de facto” occupant of the job as well. Officials in the governor’s office said Thursday that she would remain in her job until a replacement was named.

Late Friday, Gov. Jeb Bush, the president’s brother, appointed a temporary successor who would remain in the post until it is eliminated in January, part of the reorganization of state government approved by Florida voters in 1998. Bush selected Jim Smith, a former secretary of state who has been working as a lawyer and lobbyist in Tallahassee, to oversee the state’s first statewide elections since the 2000 recount.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Harris at one point said she hadn’t known the law obliged her to resign because the job that she holds is scheduled to disappear.

When reporters started pressing her about whether the official actions she took in the two weeks covered by her backdated resignation letter were legal, aides hurriedly bundled Harris out of the room.

Counterattacking, Republicans charged that another member of Florida’s Cabinet, Democratic Atty. Gen. Bob Butterworth, had not resigned as also mandated by law before qualifying as a candidate for state Senate.

“She [Harris] faced a similar set of circumstances but at least had the common sense to step up to the podium and admit her mistake,” Cardenas said.

In a statement Friday, Harris appeared to be applying the adage of practical politics that when you have lemons you should make lemonade.

“Just as I applied the law faithfully in cases that involved the interests of other persons, I have applied the law faithfully at political cost to myself,” Harris said. “To me, at least, a significant test of leadership is having the character to apply the same rules to yourself that you apply to everyone else, even when it hurts.”

In Sabato’s opinion, Harris was such a high-profile player in the disputed 2000 election recount that most Floridians, and Americans as a whole, already know what they think of her, notwithstanding the latest controversy.

“She’s the one person you’d expect to know the rules, and this can’t help her image,” the professor said. “But nothing will change her polarizing position. Republicans will always love her, and Democrats will always hate her. And that will be true to the very end of her life.”