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Wednesday, Nov 25, 2009
In 1998, Martinez became the first popularly elected Republican chairman of Orange County (and de facto mayor of Orlando), shrewdly reaching out to liberal county commissioners and winning a reputation for bipartisanship. He served as Florida co-chairman of the Bob Dole for President campaign in 1996 and co-chairman of the Bush for President campaign in 2000. In 2001, Bush rewarded Martinez by nominating him to be secretary of HUD. Martinez served three years in the job and, by all accounts, enjoyed it greatly. He had been open about his plans to run for governor in 2006 when term limits would force Jeb Bush to step down.
Those plans were upended in 2003 when, according to numerous news reports at the time, Rove began twisting Martinez's arm to get him to run for the Senate. Rep. Katherine Harris, the former Florida secretary of state who helped halt the 2000 recount, was thinking of running as well. But the White House was loath to have a symbol of the bitter 2000 election on the ballot with Bush, a problem that was solved by pushing forward Martinez to block Harris.
At the same time, Rove was said to be worried that the other Republicans running for Senate -- most prominently McCollum -- were so conservative that their presence on the ballot with Bush would likewise damage the president's reelection chances in the moderate swing state. Again, having the well-spoken and uncontroversial Martinez as the nominee would solve that problem.
But for Rove, the biggest advantage in prematurely shoving Martinez onto Florida's statewide political stage was his Hispanic surname. Latinos are estimated to make up 10 percent of the electorate in Florida.
Not only would Martinez energize the heavily Republican Cuban-American vote concentrated in Miami, the White House undoubtedly calculated, he would also spur turnout among the ethnic Puerto Ricans clustered around Martinez's Orlando-area base. The rise in the Puerto Rican population explains why registered Democrats now outnumber registered Republicans in Orange and Osceola counties. But the one way to persuade ethnic Puerto Ricans to vote Republican, past elections showed, was to put a Republican with a Hispanic name or strong Hispanic ties on the ballot. A majority of Orlando-area Puerto Rican-Americans voted for Al Gore for president in 2000, for example; but in 2002, they supported the reelection of Gov. Jeb Bush, a fluent Spanish speaker whose wife, Columba, is a native of Mexico.
A Castor spokesman was succinct when asked why he thought national Republicans were so intent on Martinez becoming the Senate nominee. "The Hispanic vote," Castor aide Dan McLaughlin said.
Despite all the obvious advantages his Senate candidacy would give to Bush, Martinez was hesitant to sacrifice his own dream of the governor's mansion in Tallahassee. He wavered for months, perhaps wary as well of the tensions that Rove's scheme appeared to be sparking between the president and his brother, who was widely rumored to be angry about Republican Party central planners invading his political turf. As a sign of Jeb's pique, the governor last year praised the "courage" of those Republican Senate hopefuls -- including McCollum and the governor's friend, state Sen. Dan Webster -- for persevering despite the White House's clear preference for Martinez.
The rumors of his anger were so persistent that Jeb Bush eventually had to acknowledge publicly that he'd discussed the matter with Rove. Yet, the governor dutifully insisted, Rove assured him that neither he nor the president would play favorites in Florida.
"When it came out [that Rove was urging Martinez to run], I wanted to get guidance and just an understanding of what Karl's view of this was," Jeb Bush told the St. Petersburg Times in 2003. "I had several conversations with him, and with my brother when he came down here. They're not endorsing him [Martinez]. They're not picking him. He's not the handpicked candidate." Of course, no one really believed this.
Martinez filed papers for his candidacy in January, running television ads that featured President Bush's endorsement. But early polls showed McCollum with a comfortable lead. And then one of the most right-wing Republicans in Florida found himself under attack for -- incredibly -- displaying insufficient conservative fervor.
In a classic Rovian move, Martinez branded McCollum "anti-family" for supporting stem cell medical research. Although the GOP's dominant anti-abortion wing will brook no dissent on research that involves the destruction of human embryos, in truth the GOP is split on the issue. Even born-again anti-abortion Christians like Florida's popular former senator, Connie Mack, McCollum's friend and political patron, support stem cell research. Mack has championed the research as a former cancer survivor.
McCollum also ran a tough campaign, running ads calling Martinez a "liberal trial lawyer." But Martinez's endorsement from Bush and superior fundraising were paying off. As the Aug. 31 primary neared, polls showed the White House favorite pulling ahead.
Apparently unwilling to leave any doubt about the outcome, however, the Martinez camp dropped a political bomb: McCollum's support in Congress for a bipartisan hate crimes law that strengthened protections for gays, women and minorities. For this noble effort, McCollum was savaged in a Martinez ad as catering to the "radical homosexual lobby." The campaign mailed fliers to voters in the Bible Belt of the Florida panhandle that labeled McCollum "the new darling of the homosexual extremists." The attacks were so mean that Jeb Bush called on Martinez to stop.
The ambush left McCollum stunned. In a televised debate, he waved a copy of the mailing and challenged Martinez to explain himself. McCollum "was just livid" during the debate, said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at Tampa's USF. "He could barely talk, he was so angry. And I think he had a right to be. It was below-the-belt stuff that was really not necessary."
