In the vacuum of Duval County, the Democrats have been fairly quiet when it comes to endorsing a gubernatorial candidate — at least until last Thursday, when Bill McBride visited Jacksonville. Janet Reno didn’t make much of a splash with her visit last month. Reno rolled into town in her red Ranger on March 5 as part of her statewide Red Truck Tour — a grass roots effort to drum up support and only 14 showed up for a scheduled fund raiser at Hidden Hills Golf and Country Club.
McBride, on the other hand, attracted a crowd of about 150 at a rally at the Radisson Thursday night...150 movers and shakers, 150 people who know people, 150 people who donate $500-a-pop, 150 people who can influence other people. U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown and former Jacksonville Mayor Jake Godbold showed up as well as a handful of City Council and School Board members and scores of business people.
Reno, the former U.S. Attorney General, was once thought to be the prohibitive favorite for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination against Jeb Bush. The Miami native has all the name recognition she needs after serving eight years for former President Bill Clinton. So far, her notoriety has served her well. In a recent poll for the Miami Herald and The St. Petersburg Times by Schroth and Associates, Reno holds a commanding lead in the Democratic primary with 48 percent compared to McBride’s 18 percent.
But McBride has steadily gained support in the last few months, most recently garnering the endorsement of the AFL-CIO, a labor group representing 500,000 workers, in late March. McBride, the former managing partner of Holland & Knight, a prominent national law firm headquartered in Tampa, boasts it’s only a matter of time before he will pass Reno.
Still, McBride is a long way from moving into the governor’s mansion in Tallahassee. Polls have him 30 points behind Reno in the Democratic primary and 21 percentage points behind incumbent Bush.
Staff writer Glenn Tschimpke sat down with McBride to discuss his campaign philosophies.
Question: The polls have you trailing Janet Reno by a substantial percent. What’s your attitude toward that?
Answer: That will stay that way for quite a while. Those are name recognition polls, basically. I won’t get that until the summer when I do television, radio and things like that. That’s what the campaign’s all about. I have higher name recognition now than we planned. I think I’m ahead of where [Lawton] Chiles and [Reubin] Askew were and right about the same place [Bob] Graham was at this time the years they ran (all successfully) for governor.
Q: You’re well known among lawyers. How will you diversify your supporters?
A: That’s very interesting. If you look at my group of people helping me in Jacksonville, it’s pretty eclectic. I’ve got Mayor Godbold, I’ve got [developer] Bucky Clarkson, I’ve got [Jacksonville NAACP president] Isaiah Rumlin. If you look at my list, it isn’t all lawyers. I’ve been pretty pleased, frankly, with the diversity of my contributor list and the supporter list. I’m pretty proud of being a lawyer.
Q: What do you think you have that Jeb Bush doesn’t?
A: He has not been the kind of governor he promised us he was going to be in ‘98. So from some perspective, we’re dealing with what I think is a failed administration and a lack of vision for Florida.
Q: How has Bush’s administration failed?
A: He ran as governor on the basis of improving our public schools. Our schools are languishing more than they ever have. He’s pushed testing and grading but he has really not spent any time making them better. I think I win on almost that alone. The parents of kids in public schools, the school teachers, the administrators, the school board members all across Florida are going to vote for me and they aren’t going to vote for him. He hasn’t been a good leader to them. Some of his programs I don’t like, like One Florida.
Q: Would you repeal One Florida if you were elected?
A: Yes, most of the aspects of it.
And then you get into higher education. I think the total rewrite of the higher policies in Florida is misdirected. Our state universities should not be competing with each other. There’s enough there alone. The real problem is that he views his job as a very minimalist job. He stands on the sidelines while the legislature had, I think, just a debacle this time.
I’m going to present more of what I call a leadership model of governor. I believe that’s what Florida needs. The thing we don’t have right now are any benchmarks or goals or targets that we’re trying to achieve together. This governor hasn’t offered one inspirational vision of where he wants to see Florida down the road. He doesn’t think that’s his job. I think it is his job.
For instance, we should have a school system that would rank at least in the top 10 or 15 states. Instead, in every major qualitative category, we’re down at the bottom five or six states. That’s intolerable. What’s going to happen is if you continue that, it promotes a low wage environment with more social services and security in prisons and police. That’s the cycle you start. What the governor of this state needs to do is to set some goals and targets and bring the business community together and say we’re going after this together. He doesn’t view that as his job. It’s my job and I’ll do it and I think I’ll get well over 50 percent of the vote, maybe much higher.
Q: Do you support more funding for public schools?
A: Clearly the schools need more funding.
Q: That means funding would likely be taken from another program.
A: Yes, but I’d rather have the fight on my priorities. If I do my budget like you do your budget, I’m going to give us the amount of money necessary to get us to where we need to be on the things that are most important. If there’s other things left unfunded, let’s fight on those grounds. Let’s see if people want new taxes for them or something like that. I think what you do is you take out the portion you need to get the schools in the right place and if there are other things that people want funded, fight that new revenue battle there after you’ve taken care of the things that are most important. See, I think they’ve put it upside down. I’ll put it the other way. We can’t keep going on saying we don’t have enough money to fund the schools. What you’re doing there is you’re cutting off the opportunity for this state to be, in any measure, high quality. Once you build a consensus to get somewhere, then people will find the money. But right now we have no vision and we have no consensus.
Q: How much money will you need to raise in your campaign to be competitive and get your name recognition where you need it to be?
A: When I win the primary, I’ll have all the name recognition I need. I’ll have name recognition in Seattle. This is going to be a pretty highly visible race. So the real question, I guess, is how do I get enough name recognition to win the primary? That’s happening on a day to day basis. We’re working hard, talking to you, you write an article. I’ll have name recognition. The issue is whether it’s good name recognition or bad name recognition.
Q: What’s your campaign strategy?
A: I’ve tried to approach it a little differently. I’ve approached it more like a sporting event in a team sport. I’m trying to build a team of my supporters and the people who work on my campaign. We’ve got two big games to play. We’ve got the primary and we’ve got the general election. I think you prepare for the general election game by being at the top of your game in the primaries. So I’m running the same game all the way through. Some people, when they prepare their games, they spend all their time worrying about the other team. I’ve decided not to do that too much. Maybe the Steve Spurrier approach: I don’t care what they do, I’m going to score more points. I’m sort of running my own campaign. I can’t control what the other candidates do, so I’m not trying to spend much time on that. So maybe the strategy is to build as strong a support base as you can and get to enough places to let people know what I care about. If they like me, they like me. If they don’t, they don’t.
Q: Polls aside, you talk like you’re the strongest of the Big Four Democratic candidates (Reno, McBride, Lois Frankel and Daryl Jones) in Duval County.
A: I think I’m the strongest of the five candidates. I think I may beat Bush here.
Q: People tend to say Duval County is Republican country.
A: They said that in the 2000 presidential election about Florida, too. I think I’ll get elected governor of Florida if I even get closer in Duval. I think I might win.