Jules Witcover: Political gratitude in Florida

Harris is the woman who, as Florida secretary of state in 2000, threw up repeated procedural roadblocks to efforts by the campaign of Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore to get fair and timely recounts in his razor-thin eventual loss of the state?s electoral votes, and the election itself.

In the process, she became a Republican heroine, but also the poster girl for Democratic charges of a rigged Florida election. It was a dubious honor that did not stop her subsequently from winning a U.S. House seat in her heavily Republican district.

So when Harris announced she would try to move to the higher-visibility Senate, Democrats not only in Florida but also in Washington and around the country began to salivate at the opportunity for political payback by defeating her.

Republicans, from President Bush in the White House and his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, to party colleagues down the line might have been expected out of gratitude for her 2000 services to rally behind her. Instead, seeing her as a loser in a statewide race, they have spent much of the past year discouraging her from running, while trying to find another Republican to challenge her.

Those efforts apparently collapsed the other day when the latest Republican being ardently wooed by the GOP, Speaker of the Florida House Allan Bense, said he would not run, on the eve of the deadline for filing. So the Florida Republicans are left with Harris, only a few short years ago the object of their affections.

The lack of ardor for her candidacy has been apparent almost from the outset, as Republicans from her old beneficiary in the Oval Office on down have failed to rush to her rescue. The unkindest public cut of all came from Jeb Bush last Monday when he told reporters, “I just don?t think she can win.”

When President Bush arrived in Florida the next day on his campaign to urge the state?s seniors to sign up for his controversial Medicare prescription drug program, Harris greeted the man who had helped put in the White House, with his brother the governor standing by.

In a midterm election year in which many Republican candidates are trying to decide whether they want help from a president whose public support has been steadily falling, Harris cannot not afford such ambivalence, and has ample reason to expect his unqualified and enthusiastic support. But he demonstrated little of it.

She told reporters later she had talked with Jeb Bush and, according to The Washington Post, was “confident that whomever is in the general election against Bill Nelson … will have the support of Republicans across the state.”

That was hardly what you would call a ringing endorsement in a race that could be critical to the Republican Party?s hopes of turning back the Democrats? well-financed bid to take control of the Senate in November. Harris is running far behind Nelson in all the prominent polls.

Compounding her woes has been the reluctance of Republicans in the state and beyond to contribute to the campaign of a personally wealthy candidate. She has been obliged to announce on television that she will spend $10 million of her inherited fortune on her own campaign. She also has suffered internal campaign divisions and defections from it.

Harris told The Washington Post the other day that “this isn?t about me,” and that she would succeed in switching the campaign spotlight onto Nelson. But clearly the election is all about her ? the woman some Florida Democrats like to call “The Dragon Lady” for her 2000 behavior, and many Republicans in Florida and in the White House would rather not call at all.

Jules Witcover, a Baltimore Examiner columnist, is syndicated by Tribune Media Services. He has covered national affairs from Washington for more than 50 years and is the author of 11 books, and co-author of five others, on American politics and history.