2 Big Names Put Democrat in Shadows

The debate was over, the dazzling TV lights extinguished, and the onetime college football linebacker and Marine combat veteran was lounging against the auditorium wall, assessing his performance.

“All I wanted to do was to let people here, the viewers, know what I cared about and what issues were important to me,” Bill McBride said. “I feel comfortable I was able to do that.”

For the past 14 months, the former managing partner of Florida’s largest law firm, Holland & Knight, has crisscrossed the nation’s fourth most-populous state in the unaccustomed role of giant-killer. His ambition is to be the next governor of Florida, but to realize it, McBride will have to overcome two proven forces of politics: Republican Gov. Jeb Bush, who is seeking a second term, and fellow Democrat and former U.S. Atty. Gen. Janet Reno.

McBride, 57, got his best chance yet at statewide exposure Tuesday evening in a televised debate at a community college here with Reno and the third candidate in the Sept. 10 Democratic gubernatorial primary, state Sen. Daryl Jones of Miami. It was a genteel affair, with the Democrats attacking Bush and not each other, and McBride returning time and again to the centerpiece of his campaign: a proposed $1-billion plan to improve Florida public education.

“I want to fix our public schools and get our state moving in the right direction--a direction of hope and opportunity for everyone,” McBride said. “I’m committed to making our schools among the best in America. Unlike the current governor, I’ll not be content to rank near the bottom in every meaningful category.”

Giving a boost to the chances of the TV repairman’s son from Leesburg is the sober conclusion by many Democrats that despite Reno’s near-100% name recognition, she remains too controversial among Florida voters for her role in the Clinton administration to have any real hope of beating Bush in November. McBride, they believe, has much greater potential to reach across party lines.

Reno is widely associated with the decision to attack the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in 1993 and to send Elian Gonzalez back to Cuba in 2000. Ann Ralston, 49, a veteran Democratic campaigner who has been coordinating volunteers for McBride in greater Fort Lauderdale, said: “Ordinary voters I know don’t think she can beat Jeb; she’s too liberal for northern Florida. And the whole goal is to get Jeb out.”

By this summer, McBride, a former University of Florida football player and Marine platoon leader in Vietnam, had clawed his way up to 41% name recognition and garnered endorsements from the teachers union and the AFL-CIO. But with less than two weeks to go before the primary, there may not be enough time for the stocky, soft-spoken political upstart to eclipse Reno’s star power and erode her grass-roots support, especially among women and liberals in South Florida.

“On the one hand, I’m impressed he has made his presence known,” said Stephen Craig, professor of political science at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where McBride also attended law school. “On the other hand, unless something happens, he is going to” lose badly.

A June poll among likely Democratic voters in the primary found that Reno would clobber McBride, 53% to 25%, with Jones picking up only 3% and the remaining 19% undecided. Political analysts believe McBride has been narrowing the gap with the former attorney general, but that he still may trail her by 20 percentage points.

“Up here, I don’t see his name a whole lot in evidence,” said Joan Carver, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Jacksonville in northeastern Florida. “You don’t hear people talking much about McBride, except political people who always talk politics.”

“Campaigns in the end, I believe, are not about promises and personalities,” McBride said Tuesday in a tacit reference to Reno’s celebrity. “They are about ideas and about commitment.”

Polls have also shown that Bush, the president’s sibling, remains popular among the Florida electorate, but McBride claimed the tide of opinion had shifted in recent weeks because of scandals in the state’s child-welfare agency and growing discontent about crowded public schools and poor school performance.

“I think it’s already turned,” McBride said. “One of the reasons [Bush] is running negative ads against me is that I think he has seen the same polls I’ve seen.”

The television spots now being broadcast by the Republicans on stations across Florida accuse McBride of dancing around the issues. In a season where the ethical lapses of big business have sparked popular anger, he may also be vulnerable because of his past as a board member of the state Chamber of Commerce and the Florida Council of 100, an advisory group of business leaders.

Some analysts question what they see as McBride’s one-note campaign, pointing out that an estimated two-thirds of Florida voters have no children in public schools. “To attract really good jobs from companies that pay high wages, you’ve got to have a good public school system,” answered the candidate, who has a son, 14, and daughter, 13.

According to a study by the Florida Education Assn., which endorsed McBride, the state ranks at or near the bottom of national tables on teacher pay, class size, SAT scores, graduation rates and other indicators of school performance. “In Florida, we’ve seen the governor desperately trying to create a positive education image, where none exists,” said Tony Welch, spokesman for the teachers union.

Bush campaign officials counter that the governor has increased spending on education by 27%, or $3 billion, since being elected in 1998, and that he instituted the state’s first system of school accountability. They also stress that Bush has been in office for only 3 1/2 years, while Democrats held the state house in Tallahassee virtually uninterrupted for decades.

“A public school system the size of ours does not turn on a dime,” said Todd Harris, communications director for the Bush campaign. “We all know and understand that Bill McBride does not think that Jeb Bush should be governor anymore; he has made that abundantly clear. What is less than clear is why he thinks he would do any better, and what specific plans and programs he would implement if elected.”