by Mark Silva and Tim Jones
LAKELAND, Fla. – On a cool weekend morning in the middle of Florida, the square-dancing convention at a downtown hotel kicks off with a click of cowboy-boot heels and a flourish of bright, poufy dresses, and a pig roast heats up at Joker Marchant Stadium, spring-training home of the Detroit Tigers.
Yet, here in downtown Lakeland, business is off this year.
“Business is off 20 to 25 percent, says Jim Doig, who runs an art gallery where prices run the gamut from $6 to $4,000. “There’s a fear factor,” he suggests. “People see gasoline one day for $3.09, the next day it’s $2.99 and the next it’s $3.15. I think this has made people afraid of spending money.”
Unease about the future of the Florida economy weighs heavily on the minds of Floridians facing a heated presidential primary election on Tuesday which could prove pivotal to the 2008 campaign for the White House – potentially catapulting the hopes of one Republican and scuttling the hopes of others.
And here, in the central “I-4 Corridor” of Florida built around a ribbon of highway stretching from Tampa on the Gulf Coast to Daytona Beach on the Atlantic and coursing through Orlando along the way, the swing-voting ability of open-minded voters has made this prime hunting territory in the final days of Florida’s primary campaign. A Republican boost here could seal the winning formula for any of the GOP’s leading contenders heading into the spree of big-state primaries on Feb. 5.
“The catapult you get coming out of the first mega-state going into the first mega-primary, I don’t think anyone can calculate the positive effect of that,” Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican, said Sunday. “Everybody’s got a Florida connection – they’re going to be watching what Florida does.’
See the report in today’s Tribune, and see an expanded report here in the Swamp:In a flood of early voting permitted here, some 300,000 of Florida’s 3.8 million Republican voters already have cast ballots, making the final push of the candidates all the more urgent.
While record numbers of Democrats also have turned out early in a state that has permitted early balloting since Jan. 14 – with nearly 300,000 Democratic ballots submitted early in a state home to 4.1 million registered Democrats – the outcome of the Democratic vote Tuesday will not be that closely watched.
The Democratic candidates have refrained from campaigning here because of the Democratic National Committee’s punishment of the state party – insisting that Florida’s delegates will not be counted at the national convention in Denver this summer – for holding a January primary against party rules. Polls have shown Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York favored to win this contest – and indeed she is calling on the party to count Florida’s delegates.
And Clinton plans to fly to Florida after the polls close here Tuesday to bask in the spotlight of what she expects will be a victory for her in this uncontested state — a necessary lift after the trouncing that Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois handed here in South Carolina.
But the Republican contest here is critical.
With polls portraying a close contest between Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the race between them has turned personal and bitter.
And former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, fighting to claim his first primary victory in a season that has brought nothing but losses for him, is attempting to rise above their bickering.
Romney has ridiculed McCain here for displaying little knowledge about the economy. He has read back McCain’s own words to him, uttered during a talk aboard the McCain campaign bus in New Hampshire about the importance of good advisers: “The issue of economics is something that I’ve really never understood as well as I should. I understand the basics, the fundamentals, the vision, all that kind of stuff.”
McCain in turn has dismissed Romney as a neophyte on national security, with little understanding about the war in Iraq. And in the closing days of the Florida campaign, McCain has won the hard-fought endorsement of Gov. Crist, whose face appears on TV ads throughout the state now urging voters to approve a cutback in property taxes on Tuesday’s Florida ballot.
And, while the economy is paramount here, McCain maintains that national security remains an urgent issue – and has slammed Romney for once suggesting that the president ought to have a “timeline” for withdrawal of troops from Iraq.
“This statement was looking for the blinking exit sign,” McCain charged Sunday. Romney, however, responded on CNN’s Late Edition, by saying, “Nice try, John.”
The former Massachusetts governor accused the Arizona senator of trying to steer the debate away from the economy, which McCain has acknowledged is not his strong suit.
“Even if the economy is the quote ‘number one issue’, the real issue will remain America’s security,” McCain told reporters aboard his campaign bus. “If it’s not the most important issue in the minds of many voters, America’s security will remain the number one issue with me.”
Giuliani, campaigning here with television ads promising to “jump-start our economy” with the biggest tax cuts in history, has attempted to play off the struggle between Romney and McCain.
“Sen. McCain has accused Gov. Romney of not having enough national security experience, and Gov. Romney has accused McCain of having not enough experience with the economy,” Giuliani said before a bank of television news cameras in Orlando. “You know something? I’ve got both.”
And he is warning voters about averting a feud like that between the Democratic front-runners: “My two rivals, Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney, are spending a lot of time attacking each other,” Giuliani said at a Republican Party dinner in Orlando Saturday night. “If they keep doing that, it’s going to sound like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. We don’t need that….”
“The economy is emerging” as the leading issue, Romney’s closing TV ads here proclaim, and he is best suited to deal with it. McCain’s TV ads show him promising: “I will make the Bush tax-cuts permanent.” And “only Rudy” has the experience to lead, Giuliani’s ads claim in a blizzard of ads in a TV-reliant state.
It is not only the primary that weighs on the minds of candidates here, but also the potential for Florida to provide a swing-vote in the presidential election in November.
It is here in Central Florida where that swing-voting power resides. Orlando’s Orange County went Democratic in 2000, siding with Al Gore over George Bush, for the first time since 1948.
“Florida is going to determine the next Republican candidate for president of the United States,” said Giuliani, who has devoted two months of campaign days here. “And I think Florida is going to determine the next president of the United States.”
It isn’t only the economy that drives this election.
“It’s mostly the war on terror,” says Susan Barrows, a Realtor in Orlando supporting Giuliani. “”That’s the big issue for me – security and border security. We need someone strong.”
And nothing immediately suggests economic trouble in downtown Lakeland, in the heart of Republican Polk County, dotted with the sculptures of local artists. Its inviting streets and handsome Munn Park are well-tended.
But conversations with workers downtown and visitors reflect concerns about the housing market in a state hit hard by the mortgage crisis, the availability of insurance in a state prone to hurricanes and living without health insurance.
As they speak of the candidates competing in Tuesday’s primary, their remarks do not reflect great expectations that the next president will be able to immediately fix the economy.
Terisa Glover runs a grocery and gift shop on Kentucky Street. She has laid a checker board and a pair of flanking rocking chairs out front. A Christmas tree still rotates in the window, a bathtub near the cash register filled with rubber duckies.
“I’m worried about the working class, people like us,” said Glover, 40, who tends this shop each day “from dark to dark” but is unable to purchase a home and cannot afford health insurance.
“I’m looking for someone who will put their money where their mouth is, and not just talk about it,” said Glover, leaning toward McCain with her vote. “I’d rather have someone be straight up and say, ‘I don’t have all the answers.”’
Around the corner, business is brisk at the formal dress shop, where half the sales are wedding dresses. Andrew Detjen, a 29-year-old lab technician, has avoided insurance and housing problems but faces a big new bill for his fiancee’s dress, $739.99
“I didn’t know everything would cost so much,” says Detjen, planning to vote for McCain. “It just keeps growing . . . I guess that tax refund won’t be going into my checking account.”
At a downtown farmers’ market, Jerry Wells, a home rehab specialist, calls the economy is his chief concern. Politicians have “put a scare into John Q. Public and they don’t know which way to turn,” he said, “so they’re not spending money.”
Wells already has voted absentee – for Giuliani, because of the way he dealt with 9/11. “It was absolutely awesome.”
For some, such as Tom Tillman, an independent consultant, the issue in this campaign is simple. “I don’t think the Republicans really care who the nominee is,” referring to the field of McCain, Giuliani and Mitt Romney. “It’s all about beating Hillary, and I don’t know one Republican who’s going to vote for her.”
Tribune correspondent Jill Zuckman contributed to this report.
