Quinnipiac University released their latest polls on Florida's two biggest races going into the August 24 primary this morning, and they both show the wealthy upstarts with solid leads over their better known establishment opponents.
The stunner is in the Democratic U.S. Senate primary, where billionaire real estate mogul Jeff Greene, a name that 99% of Floridians had probably never heard of three months ago, is now leading Miami Congressman Kendrick Meek by a double digit margin, 33%-23%.
Quinnipiac also shows Rick Scott maintaining a lead over Bill McCollum in the Republican primary for Governor, 43%-32%. That's actually a better fate for McCollum than the last Quinnpiac survey from six weeks ago, which had Scott up by 13%.
But while it's been a fact since then that McCollum has needed to pull out everything he's got in the homestretch to come back against the man that most of rank and file Republicans establishment in Tallahassee abhors, Democrats – those that didn't abandon Meek awhile ago to run into the clutches of Charlie Crist – have got to be wondering what they will do now if Greene wins, since he is still a stranger to many of them as well.
All year long Kendrick Meek's greatest problem has been seemingly that state Democratic voters do not know enough about him. And stunningly, with Scott's onslaught of television and direct mail ads, those same voters say they know Greene better now than Meek, who has served in Congress for 8 years after being in the state Legislature for 8 years.
Greene's favorability among likely Democratic primary voters is 31 – 18 percent, with 47 percent who say they don't know enough about him to form an opinion. Meek gets a 28 – 13 percent favorability, with 55 percent who don't know enough about him.
Meek finally fire up a television ad earlier this week that indicated that he knows his only recourse is to attack Jeff Greene, which is what it did. He's now relying on a gambit that he did earlier this year, which is to go from city to city in the state, pressing the flesh to sell himself on recalcitrant Democratic primary voters. Meek announced yesterday he will be conducting a 10-day "Real Dem Express' tour that will begin next Wednesday, August 4 in Orlando.
Perhaps his best bet is that he will have three debates with Greene in the next 3 1/2 weeks, with the first one scheduled for this weekend in St. Petersburg that will air locally Monday night on Bay News 9 at 8 p.m.
As far as Bill McCollum goes, the establishment favor won the endorsement of the Florida Chamber of Commerce yesterday, but more importantly, received news that the Chamber plans on contributing $500,000 to his 527 group, Florida First Initiative. In fact, the Palm Beach Post's Michael Bender reports that, as much as the talk has been that Rick Scott is spending gobs of of money, McCollum and his allies aren't without resources – and the AG of course is now collecting what Jeb Bush once derided as "welfare for politicians," matching funds now that Scott has busted the spending cap that he agreed to when qualifying to run for governor.
McCollum, who has been in the Tampa Bay all week, continues that stay today, appearing this afternoon at the Tampa Chamber of Commerce Hob Nob at the Tampa Bay History Center beginning at 5 p.m.
This article appears in Jul 29 – Aug 4, 2010.
