According to Republican political consultant Adam Goodman, Amendment Two is "definitely going down."
Speaking Friday at the Florida Association of Professional Lobbyists (FAPL) annual conference that took place this week in Tampa, Goodman said he believed the medical marijuana initiative would ultimately fail at the ballot box because of the difficulty of gaining 60 percent approval, a higher threshold for citizen-driven constitutional amendment proposals passed by the GOP-led Legislature in 2008.
And for proof, the South Tampa-based Goodman quoted from Thursday's Tampa Bay Times/Bay News 9/ Graham Center survey that showed the measure getting just 56 percent of the vote. "That's very worrisome, because the campaign hasn't begun on television yet. When the campaign begins on television to oppose Amendment Two, it's going to be fully funded, and I think it's going to be powerful and persuasive enough so that the amendment is not going to make it."
But in fact the Times poll is an outlier compared to the majority of other polls taken in recent months on the measure that shows the measure winning, with another poll taken this week from Gravis Marketing showing the measure getting 64 percent of the vote.
And for all of Goodman's certainties that the 60 percent requirement for approval ensures that every controversial ballot measure is certain to fail, that doesn't explain how the Fair District Florida amendments passed with well over 60 percent support in 2010.
(In order to thwart those two ballot measures, which aimed to prevent lawmakers from gerrymandering districts that favor incumbents or political parties, state Republicans sued to have those amendments rejected by the Supreme Court. However, the Court allowed them to remain on the ballot, and rejected a GOP redistricting proposal, saying it had a confusing summary and lacked critical information).
Goodman was joined in the discussion with one of the brightest minds in Florida Democratic politics, Steve Schale, who worked on Barack Obama's 2008 and 2012 successful campaigns in Florida. He respectfully disagreed with his GOP counterpart regarding Amendment Two, saying "as voters become more libertarian on social habits I think you'll see more and more support."
"Some of the strongest support comes from old white Republicans who have friends who are fighting cancer and other things," Schale added. And he felt - perhaps optimistically - that seeing the measure possibly fail would motivate young voters who might not otherwise be motivated to vote, based on an anecdote he shared about his teenage nephews and their friends who are eligible to vote.
Schale is working for Charlie Crist this year, and he was extremely upbeat about his chances against Rick Scott this fall. He challenged the notion that Scott will overwhelm him in campaign spending, saying that Crist has reached "parity" with Scott in the past month and says both camps believe it's a dead-heat race right now, less than 60 days before the election.
Goodman is not working for Rick Scott in this campaign, but has worked for Crist in the past. He said that while Crist has more natural charisma than Scott will ever have, he feels that Crist is still searching for a message. "I haven't seen anything that reminds me of the old Charlie," he said. "It's negative. I think without likability and the power of his persona being captured on film, particularly on television, I think it's a different Charlie."
It certainly is a different Charlie Crist than has ever run in Florida before, as he's never run for political office as a Democrat.
Schale spoke often about the changing demographics in Florida, and how it will be a big plus for Democrats in 2016. He's confident that his candidate will win this year, but acknowledges that it will be "exceptionally tight," something that Goodman agreed with.
Blacks made up 11.5 percent of the Florida electorate in 2010, Schale said. That was the year when Republicans swept all of the cabinet races and dominated across the board in that Tea Party fueled election cycle. In 2012, when Barack Obama was on the ballot, blacks were 15.5 percent of the electorate. Acknowledging that there is no way to duplicate that number in this off-year election, Schale said one key for Crist is to raise the percentage of African-American voting to just 12 percent. Combined with a better ground game than Alex Sink ever displayed in 2010, he contends that's a net of perhaps as much as 55,000 more votes than the Democratic candidate for governor got in 2010.
Goodman was effusive in praising Rick Scott for being better on the campaign stump than in 2010 (when he ran for office for the first time). Schale said that focus groups show that while voters are skeptical about both candidates,the negative baggage that Scott built up from his first years in office (like cutting funding for education and the environment) haven't been forgotten.
Neither strategist gave much love to Libertarian candidate Adrian Wyllie, who is getting nine percent support in one Quinipiac poll conducted this summer. Both consultants said that they saw Wyllie getting no more than 4-5 percent of the vote, and neither said it would disproportionately hurt either the Democrat or Republican in the race.
