Lawton “Bud” Chiles — son of the legendary Florida Democratic politician with whom he shares a name — is planning to shake up the Florida governors race by leveraging his family connections and appealing to voters he says are frustrated with partisan politics. But Democrats say that Chiles, who admitted to me that he leans more toward the Democratic side of things, could end up doing little more than clearing the path for a Republican to win in November.
Chiles says that the Democratic nominee, state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, is not cutting it when it comes to inspiring an electorate hungry for change. And he says that the wacky primary on the Republican side shows — not to mention the state GOP’s many scandals — show that there’s room for an independent to make a run.
It’s not yet clear how serious a bid Chiles will be able to mount — it will take a lot of money to play in the general election and Chiles didn’t really say how much he planned to spend. But Chiles has one natural advantage that he told me he’s not afraid to leverage, one that could potentially make him a serious contender.
“A lot of people give me the benefit of the doubt,” Chiles told me Tuesday when I asked about his famous name. “It certainly helps me…[But] what I’m banking on more than my last name is the energy out there.”
There’s evidence that his natural name ID advantage is giving Chiles a boost right off the bat. Despite the fact that he announced his candidacy on June 3, has yet to hire a full-time campaign manager and hasn’t run a single TV ad, a Qunnipiac poll out Monday showed him drawing 19% support in a three way race with Sink and the establishment GOP choice for nominee, state Attorney General Bill McCollum.
Chiles’ willingness to bank on his name makes some Sink supporters a little nervous. A national Democratic source with knowledge of the race said Democrats are in a wait-and-see mode with Chiles, wary of the support he can build with his family name but unsure if he can raise enough money to compete. And though he’s certainly no political novice, Chiles has never been an officeholder before, spending his career in political communications, philanthropy and real estate before making the decision to run for governor.
For their part, Republicans (at least publicly) consider Chiles to be the Democratic party’s problem. Even Chiles admits that his natural base is among Sink’s Democratic supporters, and when he announced his bid June 3, the state GOP said the new candidacy was Sink’s headache, not theirs.
“The fact that Alex Sink has been a disappointment to the Democrat establishment throughout the course of this campaign is even clearer now that she’s drawn general election opposition from one of her own,” Florida Republican party executive director Ronnie Whitaker said in a statement.
But Chiles says that there are plenty of reasons for Republicans to be worried, too. McCollum, is locked in an increasingly tough primary with disgraced former Columbia Health System CEO Rick Scott, who earned his conservative bona fides by funding the early town hall protests that marked the beginning anti-health care reform movement in 2009. Scott is dropping millions from his personal fortune on the primary, turning McCollum from sure thing to embattled establishment candidate (we know how that story ended when current Gov. Charlie Crist was playing the McCollum role in the Senate race).
Chiles says he can pick up the pieces of the GOP implosion. “A lot of Republicans are not happy with the movement to the ideological right and the way things have been handled in the Republican party in Florida,” Chiles said.
As for Democratic concerns that he’ll help the GOP win, Chiles dismissed them.
“That’s sort of a near-sighted view,” Chiles told me. “I think what I’m doing is creating alternative that is inspired and and is engaged in local communities.”
Chiles said that “I don’t have a problem with her,” when I asked about Sink. But he said that she is “running a campaign to tweak the system” that hasn’t inspired many. Polls bear that out to some degree — Sink is running consistently behind McCollum so far. The TPM Poll Average for a Sink-McCollum matchup shows the Republican ahead by a margin of 41.0-35.7.
“I agree much more with her philosophy than the other people in the race,” Chiles said of Sink. “But I don’t think she’s the person that can turn things around.” Chiles is pushing an ambitious agenda to fundamentally rework the way state and local government interact, putting — he says — more power in hands local leaders. That’s a message he says will appeal to voters frustrated by the partisanship in Tallahassee.
In the immediate future, Chiles is banking on frustration with the situation in the Gulf to build up his conservative credibility. Chiles called me Tuesday on the way back from a visit to Pensacola, where he went looking for oil washed up on Florida beaches. He didn’t find any — but he said he did find plenty of local frustration at the way President Obama is handling things. He said he agreed with the sentiments.
“How is Obama doing?” he said. “Not good.”
