It might be news to some that there's a Democratic primary race going on at all. As several surveys have revealed this winter, Democratic front-runner Meek has been nothing more than a bit player in the conversation about who will replace George LeMieux when his seat comes up for election this November. On the other hand, the Republican primary - aka the Charlie Crist/Marco Rubio death match - has been defined as nothing less than a battle over what the party and the country are all about. That race has engendered massive media attention, and last month a public opinion survey conducted by GOP pollsters Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates showed both Meek and Ferre lagging far behind the Republicans. In a three-way race for the U.S. Senate (with Charlie Crist running as an independent), Meek would garner 24 percent of the vote, finishing last behind Rubio's 31 percent and Crist's 26, and Ferre's numbers are even worse; when his name is placed in the mix instead of Meek's, he wins just 19 percent of the vote.
For his part, Meek is combating those numbers by amping up his profile, most recently (and unconventionally) by sponsoring a NASCAR driver, Mike Wallace, during last weekend's Daytona 500. But when Maurice Ferre looks at that 7-point difference in a little-known poll, he sees cause for hope; it shows he's still in the ballgame.
Political scientist Martin Sweet, an assistant professor at Florida Atlantic University's Honors College, feels that Meek could have been vulnerable if a name Democrat like South Florida Congressman Ron Klein or Panhandle Representative Allen Boyd had entered the race. But he doesn't think Ferre is credible enough to pull it off.
And it's going to be tough for Ferre to sell Meek as a liberal, says Sweet. "People forget that Meek was a supporter of Clinton during the primary, not Barack, and he's strong on law enforcement."
For his part, Meek vehemently disagrees with the notion that he's not a centrist, and the record bears him out. According to the National Journal's 2008 House ratings, Meek held the 85th most liberal voting record, while according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, his voting record was "significantly more conservative than the tilt of his (South Florida) district," which Cook reports is the 13th most Democratic district in the country.
Speaking to CL last week in Tampa, the 43-year-old representative, who is attempting to make history by becoming the state's first black public official elected statewide, mentioned his work on the Homeland Security and Armed Services Committees, two groups that work on national defense. "We're going to let the voters be the judge on who's liberal and who's moderate." He also stood with Obama in supporting the escalation of 30,000 troops in Afghanistan, hardly a liberal stance. And that's one vote Maurice Ferre has criticized. When asked what he thinks the U.S. should do in the region, Ferre breaks into a mini-dissertation on the war on terrorism.
"The real problem is Pakistan," he says. "But do we abandon the Afghanis? Of course not, we already did that. We have to concentrate our efforts on the enemy, and the enemy is the fundamentalist jihadis... they're in Yemen, Somalia... their number one target aren't Americans - they're the Saudis, they don't want these guys who are our friends... but. ...It's prioritizing. Who is our enemy, and how do we best use our leverage and strength for our most effective use? It's not by sending 30,000 more troops into Afghanistan. That doesn't do it."
Maurice Ferre was mayor of Miami from 1973 to 1985. From 1993 to '96, he was vice-chairman of the Dade County Board of Supervisors. Since then, he's been away from the political scene. But that hasn't stopped him from developing strong opinions on a number of subjects, and he enjoys verbal jousting on public policy.
His take on Republican Scott Brown winning the special Senate race in Massachusetts? "It was not a verdict against Democrats," he proclaims. "They're against incumbents!" He then says the top Democrat in Florida's Congressional delegation, Senator Bill Nelson, is ticked at him for bemoaning the lack of leadership amongst state lawmakers in bringing home more of the bacon for residents.
"But we're 51st in getting money from Washington!" he insists loudly at the Columbia. "We're dead last, and we've been dead last for the past 25 years, with all due respect to Bob Graham. We're a super donor state."
Although that complaint is a familiar and common one among Florida politicians running for office, the nonpartisan Washington-based group The Tax Foundation disagrees, writing on its Web site, "Florida taxpayers receive just slightly less in federal funding than they send to Washington."
Another factor in Ferre's campaign calculations is his heritage. Born in Puerto Rico, he says that the Hispanic vote is becoming more crucial in Florida politics, and he sees potential there. When asked again, though, how he will reach out to let them know he's a candidate, Ferre uses a phrase that might be considered politically incorrect. "You find those people through identity politics," he says, and then elaborates.
"You know, people like to vote for their own. It works for the Irish, it works for Jewish politicians in New York, it works for blacks in Chicago, it works for Cubans in Miami, it works. Is it good?" he asks. "That's another question. I'm not passing judgment on whether it's good or bad. The point is, it functions. So what happens if I'm able to move to, instead of a 20 percent turnout, suppose it goes to 40 percent? Suppose that 121,000 votes goes to 240,000?"
Michael Deliz, a professor of history at the University of Central Florida, says that the Ferre family name in Puerto Rico is a powerful one (the Ferres are credited with founding the island's New Progressive Party), and could be pivotal if Ferre can sucessfullly reach out to the Puerto Rican community in Florida. But, Deliz adds, "Outside the reaches of the Miami political machine, the Puerto Rican vote just does not perform in primary races."
When asked whom he admires politically, Ferre whips out a recent op-ed written in the New York Times by Harold Ford, the former congressman from Tennessee now contemplating a run for Senate in New York. Ferre said he agrees with Ford's emphasis on fiscal responsibility.
And though he says he has been a strong backer of high speed-rail going on 20 years, he's not very excited about the possibilities of a Tampa-to-Orlando line. He says the fact that there is no light rail currently in Tampa is a big problem, and argues that an Orlando-to-Miami route would make much more sense (a route that state officials say they still hope to build after the Tampa/Orlando route is completed). Ferre says he was a fan of the constitutional amendment calling for a high-speed rail line a decade ago, and says Jeb Bush should never have fought to kill the proposal (the measure went before voters years later and was successfully repealed).
"We could have had that done for $4 billion... now it's going to cost $9 billion," he laments.
Though the odds are long for Maurice Ferre, what with his shoestring budget and lack of a formidable campaign infrastructure, there's something about the man (besides his ego) that says he could just make it an interesting primary run against Kendrick Meek this year. And considering the lack of attention currently being focused on the Democratic Senate race, it wouldn't be the worst thing for Meek or the Florida Democratic Party if he does.
