Republicans in Florida are saying that the big news, come Nov. 18, could be Lamar Alexander. That day, 3,700 delegates show up in Orlando for Presidency III, the strange name the state party is giving to its straw poll, and private polling shows a tight race between the struggling Alexander, frontrunner Bob Dole, and Sen. Phil Gramm, reeling from a story last week in the New York Times about the parlous state of his fundraising. Each is polling between 20 and 25 percent.
As many as 35 percent of the delegates will arrive in Orlando uncommitted, which makes the debate between the candidates the night before the straw poll the first genuinely significant political event of the 1996 campaign. It offers Alexander, among others, the opportunity to show he can move voters in his direction. A victory in Florida would begin a Lamar boomlet precisely at the moment you want a boomlet starting, just a few months before New Hampshire and Iowa cast their votes for real. That undecided number also suggests there might be room for a certain general to announce for president, sweep into Orlando, and pull 25 percent himself, thus proving himself palatable to Republican primary voters. Interesting.
