http://jacksonville.com/news/metro/2010-04... The plan: Tug at blue collars to win over red voters.
If Kendrick Meek, a Democratic congressman from Miami, can pull that off in Jacksonville, it could shift the U.S. Senate run in his favor.
But the question is how well he'll connect with conservative Northeast Florida. He talks about growing the port and manufacturing businesses, but his opponents here are plotting to bash him over his support of the health care overhaul, arguing that his vote was a small-business killer.
That's just the start. Meek also is subject to the same pressure facing all Democrats. Voter anger swelled as the Democrats took over Congress and the White House at a time the economy was in shambles. Then it got worse.
The tactic: Meet working class voters. Explain to them that the Democratic platforms will benefit them in time. And do it before the Republicans can get to them. With that in mind, the Meek for Senate campaign is targeting Duval County as the Nov. 2 general election inches closer.
"This is definitely a punch-in, punch-out area," he said during a recent interview in Jacksonville. "In South Florida, we have tourism and festivals and South Beach, but here it's commerce - the bread and butter of commerce."
Duval County has nearly 100,000 independent voters and Democrats outnumber Republicans by 46,000, although the county has a tendency to swing to conservative candidates. That's what can make it a battleground in a close statewide race.
While Meek is trying to appeal to laborers and middle income people in the region, much of his campaign money has come from doctors and lawyers. A cursory look at his federally filed finance reports shows Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida executive Cyrus Jollivette was one of his top donors, giving $4,800. Ruth Day, an executive with Jacksonville-based trucking company Landstar, donated $1,000 in February.
So far, Meek has received general support from local labor representatives and scored major endorsements from the state and national chapters of AFL-CIO, along with state police and fire unions.
Many laborers say they see a mix of regular guy and concerned legislator, one that draws from Meek's days as a college football player and Florida Highway Patrol captain before he fought for smaller class sizes in the Florida Senate. As an extra nudge to the everyman, Meek sponsored a stock car in this year's Daytona 500.
Chris Stovall, the political liaison for Jacksonville's chapter of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Meek has scored well with laborers for his support of the Employee Free Choice Act, which aims to give unions more protection and power in the workplace.
He also points to Meek's support for NASA - a key counterpoint to the Republican argument lumping Meek into a heap of liberal Democrats. When the Obama administration cut space funding in the federal budget, Meek was quick to criticize that the move would cost Florida thousands of high-paying jobs.
Beyond that, Stovall said he's been impressed with Meek as an elected official. In union trips to Washington, D.C., Stovall said Meek is one of the few legislators who would carve out a couple minutes to listen to visitors dropping by his office. As Meek continues to meet Duval County voters, Stovall is confident that his demeanor and support of working class people will win votes.
"This is supposed to be Republican country. This is supposed to be an area that always goes red," Stovall said. "Republicans have always counted on this area as a freebie, but it's not that way."
Other people in labor want to see more from Meek.
Vince Cameron, a past president of the International Longshoreman's Association, said he wasn't moved by what Meek said about the port during a recent campaign stop in Jacksonville. Meek talked about the Panama Canal widening and how Northeast Florida, which has growing ports at the crossroads of highway and rail networks, could benefit.
"I already knew that," Cameron said. "I prejudiced his remarks to be campaign rhetoric."
Name recognition
Meek collected more than 145,000 nominating petitions throughout the state. Doing so saved him a $10,000 qualifying fee, but he said he did it in order to meet his potential voters and learn their concerns early on.
More than 11,000 of the petitions came from Duval County, including 521 from Republicans and 871 from independents. The total ranked Duval County fourth; larger petition drive numbers flowed from Broward, Dade and Orange counties.
Although Meek said the petition drive enabled him to meet voters personally, many analysts say voters still don't really know him. That could be an advantage, or perhaps a disadvantage, as he tries to emerge from the shadow of an increasingly nasty fight for the GOP nomination between Gov. Charlie Crist and former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio.
"At this point, he's almost an 'also ran,' " said Stephen Baker, a political science professor at Jacksonville University. "But there's a personal touch. There's merit to what he's doing in shaking hands."
One of those hands was Joy Graydon, a 43-year-old Army veteran and social worker who the Meek campaign said was the first Duval County voter to sign a nomination petition.
Graydon said she met Meek in Washington as she was stumping for financial support for the Tuberous Sclerosis Alliance of Florida. Tuberous sclerosis is an incurable genetic disease that causes tumors. Graydon's daughter has it.
She said she was impressed with Meek's stances on health care and education. She was also captivated by his success in life, having dyslexia and growing up in a single-parent household. Meek's mother, Carrie Meek, was in Congress throughout the 1990s.
"If he's given the chance, he can really speak to people," Graydon said. "He's doing a great job. If more people came out to see him, he would have more people voting for him."
An emphasis on Duval County harkens back to the strategy Barack Obama used in his 2008 campaign. University of North Florida political science chairman Matt Corrigan said Meek doesn't have the momentum of a national campaign, but the number of Democrats and independents could turn the race in his favor.
Corrigan, who has published a study about race and economics in Republican politics, said Meek also could capitalize by rallying Duval County's black voters. But it's not a sure thing.
"The challenge for the Dems is you have a Dem in the White House," Corrigan said. "They're going to get blamed for the economy."
Competition
So far, the Crist and Rubio camps have not taken Meek as much of a threat in Northeast Florida. Both have placed him in the "tax-and-spender" category that won't fare well with the heavy GOP voter base.
Duval County GOP Chairman Lenny Curry said defeating Meek has been part of an overall 2010 campaign strategy that's been in planning for more than a year. Key to that, he said, is proving to the same blue-collar workers Meek is courting that his stance on health care, for example, has led to government spending that their children and grandchildren can't afford.
And the goal isn't just keeping GOP votes out of Meek's hands. Curry said the Republicans want to capture Democrats and independents using the same argument.
"People understand the need to balance budgets and reduce debt. It's what they do in their own homes," Curry said.
Although there was heavy petition drive support in Duval County, the numbers fell off throughout the countryside. In Baker County, campaign officials said there were virtually no petitions while there were 758 from Clay County and 359 from Nassau County.
St. Johns County voters signed 1,826. That gave the county's Democratic chairwoman, Annette Cappella, confidence that a good chunk of the county's 36,000 Democratic voters would show up and help make the statewide total go blue. But Meek needs to keep visiting if he wants that stable of voters to grow.
Cappella said the danger of being a Miami congressman is there has not been as much published about Meek in the Northeast Florida media market compared to Crist or Rubio.
"When I saw him in Jacksonville, he appealed to a wider audience," she said. "He really did strike some kind of bell with them. He really made a connection. If you just see people on TV, it's just sound bites."
Posted By: Kendrick Meek
Wednesday, April 14th 2010 at 11:39AM
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