CREATIVE LOAFING (TAMPA): Are the Republicans done for in Florida? It’s looking that way

Are the Republicans done for in Florida? It’s looking that way
October 22, 2008 at 3:00 pm by Wayne Garcia
I got a call this afternoon from an old buddy from my consulting days, Neil Brickfield, a Republican party vice chairman who is running for County Commission in Pinellas. He won a very tough primary race and now faces an unknown Democrat who couldn’t even manage to get the liberal St. Petersburg TImes‘ editorial recommendation. Brickfield has raised nearly $90,000 to his opponent Paul Matton’s $10,000.

So you would think that in a GOP-dominated county like Pinellas, Brickfield wouldn’t have a worry.

You’d be wrong.

Brickfield said he is running hard to the end, something you will hear from every good candidate, but he was genuinely not taking the race for granted because of the incredible wave against Republicans that seems to be hitting the state of Florida. He said he had been down campaigning at the St. Petersburg early voting site, where votes were going 10-1 against him. Barack Obama’s strategy of getting (especially African-American) voters to the polls for early voting has flooded the locations already. He then spent part of the day at the Largo early voting site and reported a much stronger pro-Republican turnout there, something to be expected in that part of the county.

With John McCain atop the ticket running double-digits behind Obama, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released today, it is starting to look like the bad news for Republicans is trickling down the ballot. Late yesterday, Congressional Quarterly moved two targeted Republican congressional seats in Central Florida in and around Orlando from the undecided column to “leans Democratic.” It wrote in the race for the seat held by Ric Keller:

• Florida’s 8th District (New Rating: Leans Democrat. Previous Rating: No Clear Favorite)

In his past races, Keller had been able to count on a consistent, though diminishing, Republican voter registration advantage in his central Florida district, which includes part of Orlando. But there have been demographic changes to the district, including a growing number of Hispanic residents, and the GOP registration lead is no more. Closing figures for voter registration in Florida were released Sunday and indicate that Democrats officially hold a registration edge in the 8th, 39 to 37 percent.

That spells major trouble for the four-term Republican incumbent, according to political scientist Aubrey Jewett of the University of Central Florida.

After winning easily in his 2002 and 2004 contests, Keller had to campaign hard to achieve a 7-point victory in 2006 over a Democratic challenger, Charlie Stuart. And this year’s Democratic candidate, lawyer Alan Grayson, is much better-funded that was Stuart, having poured millions in personal funds into his campaign. A chunk of his money has gone into a battery of TV ads. “It’s certainly starting to look like Grayson might win this thing,” Jewett said.

Keller just narrowly won his Aug. 26 Republican primary over a conservative political newcomer, lawyer Todd Long, which was widely seen as a sign of increased vulnerability.

Democrats think this is one place where Obama’s coattails could help produce a House upset for the Democratic candidate. Obama visited Orlando this week and is believed to be contributing to the increased Democratic registration in the district.

And in the bitterly fought race against incumbent Tom Feeney, CQ found:

• Florida’s 24th District (New Rating: Leans Democratic. Previous Rating: No Clear Favorite)

Democrat Suzanne Kosmas, a former state representative who once appeared a long-shot challenger to Republican Feeney, now appears to hold an edge in their race in Florida’s 24th District — a swath of the east-central part of the state which includes Orlando suburbs and part of the Space Coast.

This might have seemed a highly unlikely scenario as recently as 2004, when Bush was taking 56 percent in the 24th — and Feeney, who helped design the district in his previous role as state House Speaker, was running unopposed for re-election.

But that was before the name of Jack Abramoff, the convicted Washington influence peddler, became part of the political conversation in the district. Feeney was one of several House members who took golfing trips to Scotland that they later learned were financed by Abramoff.

After long stating that he had done nothing unethical and paying reimbursement for the trip, Feeney was unable to tamp down criticisms by Kosmas and other Democrats. So he took the unusual step of apologizing to his constituents in a paid ad this summer, labeling the trip a “rookie mistake.” Yet the Orlando Sentinel’s editorial board noted the Abramoff flap in its recent endorsement of Kosmas.

“It was always almost on the front burner and it was easy to move it to the front burner,” Susan MacManus, political scientist at the University of South Florida, said of the Abramoff connection.

Republicans also now hold just a 3 percentage-point voter registration edge in the district. “I think it leans Democrat for the Feeney race,” MacManus said.

The mounting fear may have been behind Gov. Charlie Crist (continuing to slowly emerge from his post-”I-got-my-ass-whupped-by-Sarah-Palin-for-veep” isolation) yesterday headlining a conference call with reporters reiterating that John’s His Man. “It’s Florida, Florida, Florida for sure,” he told reporters.

And finally, down in South Florida, where three Cuban Republican congressmen are under heavy mortar fire, the Democrat Annette Taddeo has released a campaign-financed poll that shows her closing to within a few points of incumbent Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Take that one with a grain of salt, but still, it shows the relative strength of down-ballot Democrats as they benefit from an anti-Palin backlash and lackluster performance by McCain.