Is Crist fundraising while Florida burns?

Focus on Senate campaign sits poorly with some rivals

By Joe Follick

Published: Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.
Last Modified: Saturday, August 1, 2009 at 10:42 p.m.
TALLAHASSEE - The day after Florida's unemployment rate climbed to 10.6 percent, the highest in the state since the mid-1970s, Gov. Charlie Crist was in the Hamptons, the tony millionaire enclave in New York.

Crist was gathering tens of thousands of dollars at a fundraiser for his U.S. Senate campaign.

While Florida has sunk deeper this summer into its worst recession since the Great Depression, several of the state's top political leaders have been busy tending to other business -- raising money for what are expected to be spirited statewide campaigns in 2010 for U.S. Senate, governor and attorney general.

In the past few months, Crist raised more than $4 million around the country. He is spending this weekend in Aspen, Colo., at yet another fundraiser.

Three other top Florida officials -- Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, Attorney General Bill McCollum and Lt. Governor Jeff Kottkamp -- are also running for new jobs. Sink and McCollum are competing to be governor. Kottkamp is running for attorney general.

The difference between the dismal state of Florida's economy and the success Crist is having raising campaign cash has created unusual alliances, with people who are usually political foes uniting to attack the governor.

Says Alex Burgos, a spokesman for Crist's GOP primary opponent Marco Rubio: "While Charlie Crist audaciously claims he is busy 'governing' in Aspen, Floridians await his substantial answers on how to address double-digit unemployment and a stimulus that has yet to stimulate the state's economy."

Says Eric Jotkoff, a spokesman for the Florida Democratic Party: "As governor, Crist has had time to jet-set around on his cronies' private jets, attend cocktail parties in Washington, D.C., and hobnob with celebrities, yet he continues doing nothing to create jobs."

Crist insists that he is "never not governor" and said last week that his campaigning for the U.S. Senate is not taking away from his job leading the state.

"I devote most of my time to being governor," Crist said. "I'm not campaigning much."

A review of his schedules in the past three months show Crist frequently meeting with business groups, local chambers of commerce and his own team of economists. But many of the days' scheduled events wrap up in the early afternoon. Absent are the kind of bold pushes that Crist advocated during the first two years in office.

In the past three months, Crist has unveiled no major policies or initiatives to stem the economic collapse in Florida. His schedules show many days limited to a few phone calls and little else.

Last week was a typical one for Crist. He visited National Guard troops in Starke and tornado victims in Port Orange on Monday and had a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, Crist visited a business and a university roundtable on renewable energy before two hours of "work and call time." Thursday's schedule had a one-hour visit to a renewable energy meeting in Orlando with "work and call time" ending at 2:45 p.m. And Friday's schedule showed three phone calls with staff and two hours of work and call time ending at 3:45 p.m.

Crist has long defended his frequent absences from Tallahassee and schedules that are often empty of planned meetings. From April 2008 to April 2009, Crist's schedule showed no work for the equivalent of 14 weeks, The Associated Press reported.

State Rep. Keith Fitzgerald, D-Sarasota, said the voters do not expect the governor to solve the economic crisis, "but they do expect some coherent response. I imagine that his opponents will be asking what he did to get us through these hard times."

Fitzgerald added that Crist showed political courage in being among the first Republican governors to push for federal stimulus support, billions of dollars in aid that prevented deep cuts in schools, police and other government services.

On the other hand, Fitzgerald said, Crist has failed to advance one of his biggest initiatives, making Florida a leader in renewable energy. Had Crist been successful, it would have given another engine to the state's economy.

University of South Florida political science professor Susan MacManus says politicians are often leery of making waves in uncertain times. The result is an intense approach to fundraising and a shuttering of policy initiatives.

"Next year could potentially be the year of the anti-incumbent, and so some of these established office holders are going out early to try to get on the offensive" with fundraising "to chase off potential opponents," she said.

"Politicians are just very nervous that what they campaign on now may not be what's really on people's minds in November 2010," she said.

Crist is the first Florida governor in the 40 years since governors could serve two terms to voluntarily leave office after one term.

"You get criticized if you resign and run and you're criticized if you don't resign and run," she said. "And it's one of those odd years where everything we kind of know about politics isn't necessarily playing out."

Darryl Rouson, a Democratic state legislator from St. Petersburg whose district runs through parts of Manatee and Sarasota counties, said some of Crist's critics may be masking their own envy over his ability to balance fundraising with statesmanship.

"I believe he is doing the best he can do," Rouson said. "He is not abdicating his responsibilities to the citizens of this state."

It is not clear that the voting public will care about Crist's campaigning while his time in the governor's office winds down. His support in polls remains steady at 60 percent or higher.

Crist adviser and longtime GOP lobbyist Mac Stipanovich said the average Floridian, like his mother, does not care about Crist's fundraising forays.

"She doesn't know what the hell the governor is doing. And she doesn't know how long fundraising takes and she doesn't know how much being governor takes," he said. "It would have to be some explosion before she would say that's a problem."

With both Sink and McCollum sitting on the Cabinet, expect few attacks from either about campaigning taking away too much time from the job at hand.

And each has made some efforts to address the state's economic blues. McCollum in the past week has announced plans to help families facing foreclosure and a public hearing on mortgage fraud.

Sink has similarly held public forums for economic development groups and foreclosure prevention.

Sink said that "instead of working 50 hours a week, I'm working about 80" with her two roles as CFO and gubernatorial candidate.

"The people of Florida sent me here to do my job as the chief financial officer. That has to be my first priority," she said last week. "I really don't take any time off from thinking about what's going on in the office."

McCollum said the job of attorney general is not a nine-to-five routine with late nights reviewing legal activity and Cabinet business.

"I have a day job. I'm keeping that day job and being attorney general of Florida always comes first," he said. "I put in a lot more than 40 hours and I will continue to do that.

"Yes, there are extracurricular hours for me," he said of fundraising in the evening and during lunch. "But I think if the public actually followed us around for a day, I think they would find that we're extraordinarily busy."

For all these office holders, the pursuit of new jobs while nearly 1 million Floridians are out of work might strike some as putting their own ambitions above the needs of the citizenry. But it doesn't surprise those close to the process.

"Historically, nothing's new about ambition for politicians," Fitzgerald said. "James Madison wrote 230 years ago that the motives for people running for office are ambition, self-interest and the pursuit of the common good. That was the order."