Both Parties Train Sights on Florida in November

Democratic delegates from Florida, the epicenter of the 2000 election where chads and courts decided one of the closest votes in American political history, have focused on making sure this year their state falls clearly and decisively into their camp.

As the week of the Democratic National Convention wore on, state party officials and activists shared war stories from the 2000 political and legal fight, an election many emphatically say was stolen by President Bush and his supporters, including his brother, Florida Governor Jeb Bush.

Democrats have accused the Governor Bush of overseeing a state not interested in ensuring voting rights for all.

"Will we have a clean election in 2004 or a Florida fix again?" Jesse Jackson recently wrote in the Chicago Sun Times, adding the state was on the verge of "supplanting Chicago as the symbol of the rigged election."

But despite the controversies, or perhaps because of it, leaders from both parties say the state is still in the hot seat.

"Florida is the election," said Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden, one of the Florida delegation's guest speakers on Tuesday morning. "I'm not joking when I say I would not want the responsibility."

With 27 electoral votes, Florida is the largest haul on the list of closely divided and politically volatile presidential battleground states. Recent polls and recent history indicate that anything could happen in Florida come November.

And this lynchpin role has translated into first class treatment in Boston this week.

"We have had a lot of attention given to the state of Florida," Florida Democratic Party Chairman Scott Maddox said, reeling off the list of celebrity speakers who had visited the delegation as of Tuesday, including Ben Affleck, Alec Baldwin, Richard Dreyfus and Jesse Jackson.

"We are also placed front and center on the floor in the convention, and I think we're placed front and center because we are going to be front and center in this election," Maddox said.

But even better positioned than the delegation in Boston is John Kerry to win Florida, according to Maddox.

"When the people of Florida get to know John Kerry and what he stands for, he'll get the vote in November," he said.

But Maddox's GOP rivals in Florida have reason to feel confident with the president's brother living in the governor's mansion and Republicans in control of the legislature. The GOP considers Florida Bush Country.

"Florida voters know who George W. Bush is," said Carole Jean Jordan, chairwoman of the Florida Republican Party, adding that the president's policies have brought security and prosperity to the state.

But for Florida Democrats, the state is a hallowed battleground, the place where they believe voting irregularities and a halted recount cost 2000 presidential candidate Al Gore his political life and rightful ascension to the presidency, and where they say the Bush brothers' policies have been detrimental to the lives of ordinary citizens who will move to oust the president in November.

Though both parties have staked their claims on the peninsula, neither has emerged with a clear advantage in the 2004 race for the White House, despite the fact that both candidates have been paying Florida a lot of attention.

With 12 campaign appearances, John Kerry has visited Florida more than any other state since he became the presumptive Democratic nominee in March, according to washingtonpost.com. Four visits by President Bush during the same period make Florida his second most visited state after Pennsylvania.

When the candidates show up in the Sunshine State, they're usually a stone's throw from Interstate 4, which bisects the state east to west from Daytona Beach to Tampa. The communities along the highway are collectively known as the "I-4 corridor" -- the most targeted territory in the state.

Rapid growth has brought a diverse population to the area along the interstate. Industry ranges from tourism to agriculture to high tech. Rural farming communities, ramshackle trailer parks, suburban subdivisions and upscale resorts dot the landscape.

The Orlando Sentinel has called the area "a region in name only, where job growth has brought an assorted population of 4.6 million people not united by jobs, family, background, or beliefs."

While groups of voters in the rest of the state are widely considered to have already committed to one candidate, the Floridians living along I-4 seem to be an amazingly malleable group.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, whose city sits in the dead center of the region, believes the 2004 race will be won or lost in communities like his.

"I actually think the whole presidential election will be decided along the I-4 corridor," Dyer said. "In Florida, it is a turnout war in North Florida and South Florida, just how many Democrats you get to the polls and how many Republicans you get to the polls, but along the I-4 corridor it's really a lot of independent voters, a lot voters who will vote for a Republican or Democrat based on what their ideas are and who the man is."

So pollsters and politicos are scrutinizing central Florida in an attempt to identify groups and issues that may provide a political advantage in the fall.

"Any group they can identify, they're going after," Susan MacManus, political science professor at the University of South Florida, told the Online NewsHour.

But she said the diverse I-4 voters have proven cagey and fickle, susceptible to persuasion and seduced by personal contact with the candidates.

"You see a four point swing for whoever came here last," MacManus said.

A four-point swing, however, is not nearly enough to put any daylight between the candidates. MacManus points out that most recent poll result are within the margin of error.

The longer the race remains tight in the region, the more money will flow in.

By the first week in July the Bush campaign had spent $15 million advertising in Florida media markets, the most it has spent in any state, according to the Orlando Sentinel. The Sentinel reported that the Kerry campaign was not far behind, having put down $14 million for ads. But Kerry reportedly leads Bush $8 million to $6 million in media spending in the I-4 corridor.

The parties consider two groups of I-4 corridor voters -- identified primarily by age and ethnicity -- crucial to winning the state: "non-Cuban" Hispanics and younger whites.

"I-4 is where the swing voters are, and Orange County is right in the middle of it," Richard T. Crotty, the Republican chief executive of Orange County, told the Los Angeles Times. And for 2004, Crotty said, "it's ground zero."

The region's non-Cuban Hispanic voters are seen as a winnable constituency by both parties, unlike the mostly Cuban American Hispanics of South Florida who overwhelmingly vote Republican.

White voters under 40 are also considered an open-minded group, willing to throw their support to the candidate who has the right message on the issues that matter most.

Education, jobs and security top the list of both groups' concerns, according to MacManus, who predicts the election may come down to which issue is on the mind of the two major voting groups at the time of the election. If the main concern in November is jobs, Kerry may hold the advantage. If it is terrorism, the president may have an edge.

Democratic and Republican officials agree with MacManus on the issues that will drive the election.

"Florida is a microcosm of the nation, so the issues that are pertinent in Florida are the national issues," Democratic Party chief Maddox said. "In this election voters are going to be looking for a sensible foreign policy, a real plan to bring jobs back to America, and affordable health care."

Florida GOP head Jordan counters that President Bush's broad record of success on those issues puts him in a good position with Florida's swing voters, allowing him to be "all things to all" people.

Both sides expect the winner's edge in Florida to be razor-thin. Mayor Dyer said that the 2000 election results in Orlando and surrounding Orange County provide a perfect example of the area's importance, competitiveness and volatility.

"Four years ago I told [Democratic presidential contender and Connecticut senator] Joe Lieberman on Saturday night before the election to look at the results from Orange County. And if they won Orange County then they would have won Florida, and if they had won Florida then they would have won the nation," Dyer said. "And at 7:30 I looked pretty accurate in that regard."

Gore won Orange County by 2 percentage points and around 6,000 votes. By 8 p.m. on election night 2000 he and most news organizations thought he had won the state. By the following day it looked as if George Bush had narrowly prevailed statewide and the chaotic post-election period was underway.

-- By Jason Manning, Online NewsHour