HarrisWatch: Campaign Bravely Toes Line between Farce, Tragedy

The Orlando Sentinel‘s Jim Stratton brings us scenes from what’s left of the Harris campaign Thursday, which hosted a campaign rally at which none of the nine elected officials listed on the event’s flyer showed up.

Stratton, whose comic sensibility appears matched only by his eye for tragic detail, reports that one official, State Sen. Daniel Webster, R-Winter Garden, insists he never endorsed Harris nor promised to attend any rally. Harris insisted the man was lying.

“They called back twice and said he’d be here,” Harris told the Sentinel. “He said he was going to be here on the stage with me today.”

As a result, Stratton reports, “the most prominent official on hand was former state Rep. Allen Trovillion, who left office four years ago.” Trovillion appears not to have been listed on the flyer.

Without the nine guest stars, Harris was alone in addressing a crowd of about 40 people — and that number includes the reporters and campaign aides.

Here’s how Stratton describes it:

Harris spoke in an airplane hangar that seemed to highlight the modest size of the crowd. She said a last-minute location change — required because a tree fell on the hangar where the event was supposed to be held — kept crowd numbers down.

Airport officials, however, said no hangar had been damaged by a tree and that the rally was in the hangar that had been originally booked.

Harris spoke for 10 minutes, saying she is the only candidate with the conservative credentials to defeat Nelson. When she finished, red, white and blue balloons dropped onto an empty stage, rendered unnecessary by the sparse crowd.

Comic? Certainly. But there’s a sense of sadness, which Stratton brings out with his close:

Not everyone backing Harris is so upbeat.

This week, as Harris made the rounds at a Winter Park political gathering, U.S. Rep. Tom Feeney said he continues to back her — but he does so primarily out of a sense of duty.

“I endorsed Congresswoman Harris a year ago,” Feeney said. “I made a commitment, and I’m going to live up to that commitment.”

Feeney was then asked why he offered such a tepid endorsement.

“I won’t disclose publicly what I said to Katherine privately,” he said. “But that notwithstanding, she decided to run.”

Moments later, Feeney added, “It’s very sad.”