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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Jeb Bush insists he did not know of any bribes of Nigerian officials, and that he did not personally profit off any piece of the Nigerian deal. But the governor's political opponents say Bush has failed to answer questions about what he did for Bush-El to merit nearly $650,000 he received from Eller when he ended the partnership in 1994. Bush has said that his Bush-El profits came from deals the company made in other countries, such as Mexico, that did not involve financing from any U.S. government institution.
Bush's answer to the charges, the first time around, was a simple one. "Either you trust me or you don't," he told the Miami Herald in 1998. Harris says Florida voters are satisfied that Bush did nothing wrong, and said Bush has no intention of documenting his past business dealings with Eller.
Now that the Justice Department is involved in the case, Democrats are trying to use the lawsuit to score political points, once again calling on Bush to fully disclose what he did to earn the $648,250 Eller paid him. But while Bush has been candid about certain aspects of his financial past -- he has, for example, released two decades worth of personal income tax records -- he still has not answered reporters' questions about the work he did for Bush-El. And, Democrats point out, Eller "hosted" a June fundraiser for Bush's reelection campaign. Harris says Eller was simply one of more than 100 Bush donors who were listed as co-sponsors of the event.
Much the way his brother has evaded pointed questions surrounding his
Part of the problem is the state's own Democratic Party, which is bitterly divided, with most party regulars lined up behind McBride. Polls show Reno is popular with Democratic primary voters, so she looks unstoppable in the Sept. 10 primary, but many Democrats fear she is unelectable statewide.
It wasn't supposed to be this way. Democrats were hoping to harness lingering resentment from the 2000 presidential election, as well as blacks' anger about Bush's moves against affirmative action, into a crusade to dump Bush from the Statehouse in 2002. While early predictions had Florida one of the most contested gubernatorial races in the country this year, recent polling still shows Bush with double-digit leads over both McBride and Reno.
But any lingering Democratic anger from Election 2000 may be offset by tepid reaction to the party's candidates. The party favorite, former ambassador to Vietnam Pete Peterson, took a pass on the race when Reno danced her way in. Democratic insiders, both in Florida and Washington, worry that Janet Reno is the Democrats' Bill Simon -- the wrong candidate in the wrong place at the wrong time, who is running a terrible campaign against an opponent -- in Simon's case California Gov. Gray Davis -- who should be vulnerable. Still, some Florida political observers warn against labeling Bush a shoo-in. "I expect the race will be quite close," says Darryl Paulson, a professor at the University of South Florida who expects Reno to win the primary easily. "I would be surprised if it's more than 53-47 in the general. I think she has the potential to pull an upset. The most effective rallying cry for the partisans is some reference to the 2000 campaign, the stolen election."
Paulson insists Reno or McBride have at least a fighting chance against Bush, because the 1990s changed the political makeup of the state dramatically. More than 1 million African-Americans moved to Florida during that decade, and the state's non-Cuban Hispanic population continues to boom. Cubans, too, have begun to liberalize, a little, with younger voters less likely than their elders to demand hard-line anti-Castro stands. And Paulson says Republicans did not pay close enough attention to how Florida had changed when they made their calculations about the last presidential race, in which the governor's brother required Supreme Court assistance to win a state he was supposed to carry by a landslide.
"The 2000 Election was a good example of Republicans being caught by surprise," he says.
In the meantime, local Democrats are doing everything they can -- including trying to tarnish the governor with the Justice Department's suit against his former partner -- to try to convince national Democrats that the race is in play.
"It's the thing he just refuses to answer any questions on," says Florida Democratic chairman Bob Poe. "He says he's got nothing to hide, but yet he won't tell us anything about it. That inconsistency is very troubling." Like a lot of Florida Democrats, Poe links Jeb's handling of his business past with the way his brother handled questions about his own questionable business deals. "He's been hoping for a long time that people would forget and this would just go away, that if he just kept not answering, people would get tired of asking. That seems to be a trait in the Bush family."
A Florida Republican Party spokesman accused Democrats of trying to drudge up phantom scandals from Bush's past in an effort to tar the governor. And he said most Florida voters will ignore them. "They're like the chatty bird up in the tree -- people eventually start to ignore it," said Florida GOP spokesman Towson Fraser. "Whether it's true or not, or whether it means anything or not, people will eventually kind of tune you out."
Not only have Florida voters tuned out the MWI story, but so have many national Democratic leaders. Several contacted by Salon admitted on background that they had never heard of the MWI story, and expressed doubts the story was the kind that could turn the Florida governor's race around. The problem, they insist, is with their own candidates, and the lackluster campaigns they have run thus far.
"After 2000, everyone thought this would be a race we would be focusing on [in 2002]," said one Washington Democrat. "Now, it's like, 'There's one less race we have to worry about.'"
