by Bradley Parsons
Staff Writer
Bill McBride is three years removed from his failed run at the Florida governor’s office, but there’s still a chance that politics will become a family business.
After his unsuccessful pursuit of elected office, the former managing partner at Holland and Knight is now contemplating a campaign of a different kind. McBride is strongly considering pushing a ballot initiative for the November 2006 state election that would raise cigarette taxes by as much as a dollar a pack. The money would go to cancer research, he said.
In Jacksonville for a visit with attorney Wayne Hogan, McBride said he was already trying to line up the financial backing necessary for a campaign to amend the State constitution. The success of those talks will determine whether the campaign moves forward, he said.
Florida cigarette prices run about 35 cents below the national average, said McBride. Increasing prices would result in a hundred-plus-million-dollar annual windfall for the State, according to McBride’s research. The amendment would designate the money for cancer research only.
McBride said he was spurred to take action when several friends were recently stricken with cancer.
While the prospect of five-dollar cigarette packs would probably get voters’ attention, the McBride family member with the chance to make real waves in 2006 is wife Alex.
Adelaide “Alex” Sink, former Florida chief of Bank of America who briefly ran the bank from a Jacksonville office, is still being pursued by the state Democratic Party to run for Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, said McBride.
“She’s being pursued pretty hard,” he said.
Sink told the St. Petersburg Times in March that she wasn’t interested in any 2006 campaign; she’d also been rumored as a potential congressional candidate. But it was McBride who first brought up her possible candidacy during his visit.
“You should talk to my wife, she’s probably a better story. They’re talking about her running for chief financial officer,” said McBride.
Sink is still considering a run at the office, he said. Furthermore, McBride thinks the job would be a good fit.
“She’d be really good at it,” he said.
Sink, 56, has been a regular in the Democrat rumor mills for several high-profile elections. She considered running for Bob Graham’s U.S. Senate seat in 2003 and was mentioned as a possible running mate for 1998 democratic gubernatorial candidate Buddy McKay.
Jeb Bush’s victory in that election pushed McBride to consider his run at the office four years later.
Political observers point out that Sink would bring to any candidacy a ready-made network of contacts across the state, some left over from her husband’s campaign, but most formed during her 25-year rise to the top of Florida’s banking industry. The CFO post is currently held by Tom Gallagher who is expected to go for a higher calling, either governor or U.S. senator.
Throughout their careers, both Sink and McBride have been admitted political junkies.
McBride has been raising money for Democratic presidential candidates all the way back to Gary Hart in 1984. Sink once told political writer Bob Andelman that it was McBride’s work with Hart that convinced her that she’d found the right man. She said she had decided never to marry a Republican.
McBride said he’d be happy to offer any support to his wife’s campaign although he said she hasn’t asked for advice yet. He learned a lot, he said, from his failed campaign against Bush: “They say experience makes a good teacher, and I think the best teacher is bad experience. I learned a lot of lessons then.”
McBride came to the Democratic primary as a political unknown but he ran his campaign like an insider, lining up the party’s power brokers behind him. Ironically, it was former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno who ran the folksy primary campaign, touring Florida in her red pickup truck.
McBride managed to upset Reno by winning endorsements from establishment Democrats like the teachers unions. But some observers thought the focus on the party heavy hitters cost him with the rank-and-file. McBride received relatively tepid support from black voters and the elderly.
After Bush dispatched McBride by a surprising 13-point margin (56 percent to 43) even some Democrats turned on their candidate. McBride was criticized in the media for relying too much on television ads over personal campaigning and for not preparing enough for a televised debate with Bush. He was even criticized for sleeping in on election day instead of voting early when television cameras were rolling.
McBride learned the value of thick skin and for that reason thinks his wife might make a better candidate.
“She’s more suited for a campaign than I was. She’s maybe tougher. I always rise to the bait (when criticized), she knows better,” he said.
As for his own political aspirations, McBride doesn’t rule out the possibility that his name might again appear on a ballot.
Fittingly, for a man who once described himself as “Mr. Mom” during a time when he stayed with the couple’s two kids while Sink worked in Miami, McBride’s future career in politics depends on his family.
First, he’s waiting for his wife to make her decision for 2006. Then he’s waiting for his children, 17-year-old Bert and 16-year-old Lexi, to move on to college.
After the 2002 campaign, McBride said he promised himself not to run again until his children moved out of the house. The extra time spent with them is the best thing to come out of his loss to Bush, said McBride.