No Harris on the Florida Punch Card

Until the final moment, U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris kept her supporters and foes guessing whether she would run for an open Senate seat in Florida. On Friday, the controversial Republican who certified George W. Bush the victor in the 2000 presidential election in Florida, made her decision known.

“After careful deliberation, I am here to announce my candidacy for the U.S. Senate,” Harris told supporters in Sarasota, as they burst into cheers and applause.

“But just not this year,” she said, stunning the crowd.

Some Republican Party operatives had worried that Harris’ name on the ballot this November might galvanize Democratic voters and harm President Bush’s reelection chances in Florida, which he carried by a slender 537-vote margin in 2000. As Florida’s secretary of state, Harris oversaw the disputed vote count, becoming a hero to many Republicans and a villain to many Democrats.

Harris’ decision not to seek the seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Bob Graham “really does take a big negative off the table for Republicans trying to carry Florida for the president this year,” said Susan MacManus, professor of political science at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

“Katherine Harris is a lightning rod candidate, like Hillary Clinton.”

Florida, with 27 electoral votes, is considered a crucial battleground by Republican strategists working to help the president win a second term.

A poll on the Senate race published by two Florida newspapers last month found Harris to be the clear frontrunner in an already crowded field of Republicans, with backing from 29% of GOP voters. She was followed by former U.S. Rep. Bill McCollum, with 15%, and former U.S. Housing Secretary Mel Martinez, with 11%.

On the Democratic side, former state Education Commissioner Betty Castor, U.S. Rep. Peter Deutsch and Miami-Dade Mayor Alex Penelas are vying for their party’s nomination.

Harris, 46, a first-term congresswoman from the Sarasota area on Florida’s Gulf Coast, managed to keep people guessing about her candidacy. Joseph Agostini, spokesman for the Republican Party of Florida in Tallahassee, said he was receiving conflicting calls almost until the moment Harris made her announcement, broadcast live by some Florida television stations.

The suspense, Agostini joked, was “almost like watching the final episode of ‘Friends.’ ”

Harris, speaking at a Boys & Girls club in Sarasota, said House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert telephoned her in the morning to ask her to seek a second term in the House this fall. Another factor in her choice, she said, was that she is part of the GOP leadership team in the House.

Some analysts said they expected Harris to be further rewarded by her party for her willingness to defer a Senate run until 2006, when the six-year term of Florida’s other senator, Democrat Bill Nelson, expires.

Martinez, a Cuban-American from Orlando, quit the Cabinet last month and is widely seen as the White House’s candidate of preference in Florida. Following Harris’ announcement, he praised her work in Congress and denied he had entered the race to derail her candidacy.

Scott Maddox, chairman of the Democratic Party of Florida, said that his party would have relished going head to head with Harris in a statewide race but that Democrats were ready to debate any Republican candidate for the Senate. As in the disputed recount, Maddox charged, Harris heeded the wishes of her party’s higher-ups.

“We’ve seen Karl Rove manipulate Katherine Harris in the election in 2000,” said Maddox, referring to the White House political advisor. “What we’ve just seen is them manipulate her out of the election in 2004.”