Florida is your future
by Jon Worley

There was a lot of handwringing in Florida democratic circles last week. President Clinton did take the state so convincingly that all the networks declared him the winner based solely on exit polls one minute after the polls closed statewide, and he is the first democrat to do so since Jimmy Carter in 1976. The downside to the election is that the democrats lost the state House for the first time since reconstruction, and as the republicans already hold a slim majority in the Senate, this means Governor Lawton Chiles will have to face down two enemy houses in the legislature.

See, Florida has truly become a two-party state. But I don't see this as bad at all. Because while Republicans are now winning many more offices than ever before, the state's politics are actually moderating, moving from the far right wing toward the center. A perfect example is my own county, Pinellas.

We voted for Clinton in an almost mirror image of the national popular percentage, but returned two republicans to the U.S. House and didn't elect a single democrat in five countywide races. Across the bay, in Hillsborough County, voters went for Clinton by only two points, but elected democrats to almost all other offices, most by big margins.

I think this sort of vote splitting is a great idea. Now, I personally would rather have had Bob Dole as president than Bill Young representing me Congress. But still, these races show that people are paying attention, not just voting a strict party line. And to be honest, the republicans in Pinellas County are much better organized than the democrats.

In two years, Jeb Bush will likely win the governor's race, whether or not Bob Graham leaves the U.S. Senate to oppose him. Much like the Bobster, I don't have a real problem with Jeb. He's bilingual (his wife is Columbian), truly moderate on social issues (much like his dad was when George was known as "Rubbers" Bush) and nothing if not intelligent and reasonable. Am I going to vote for him? Probably not. But he's the sort of republican that gives the party a good name.

Yeah, there are republican jerks like "Chain Gang" Charlie Crist, my state senator who is planning to run for Bob Graham's U.S. Senate seat in 1998. He's planning on introducing legislation that makes sure chain gangs can't actually do real work, but are simply the closest thing to pillories we've seen in three hundred years. See, when he drove I-75 to and from the legislature, he didn't see enough black men chained up along the side of the road. "Gotta fix that", he said to himself.

So there are still bastards out there. They exist even in such liberal strongholds as Massachusetts and Minnesota, so a small population should be tolerated in Florida. But Florida's population has become a mirror of the nation's, and so our politics should be expected to roam in the same way. Now, I plan to keep working to advance my own peculiar brand of free-market liberalism, but I don't mind a little competition.

The thing is, this shift in legislative power has been in the offing since the 1970s, when state power was shifted from the Panhandle (read: the part of Florida that still thinks of itself as "Southern") to all of the state (where most of the people live). The idea of one person, one vote finally started to percolate in the state, and things haven't been the same since. So there's no need to worry about this particular shift in party power. The funny thing is, many republicans are less conservative than the democrats who have been running things forever.

I've told many of my friends the same thing. What the democrats in Florida need to do is realize that we have to convice the people that our ideas are the best, not rely on the old "yellow dog" democratic population that thinks guys like Goldwater are way too liberal. A little hard work (and perhaps some inspired thinking) should do the trick nicely.

Anyway, I think this is precisely what the founding fathers had in mind when they came up with our odd form of government. Sure, our elections may resemble bad Hollywood war movies, but just like those movies, ideas are at the core of the fray. And an idea can be more dangerous than all the assault rifles in the world.

on Worley really doesn't like living in Florida, but figures while he's there he might as well take advantage of a few manatees.

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