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Politics & The Nation
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SUNDAY, AUGUST 1, 2010
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Slow, steady aren’t winning race in Fla.
by Philip Rucker
miami — In a year of the un- conventional candidate and in a Florida Senate race filled with them, the by-the-book campaign of Democrat Kendrick Meek has left the congressman in such a pre- carious spot that he might not even make it out of his own party’s primary.
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expected three-way race with “tea party” darling Marco Rubio and newly independent Gov. Charlie Crist, Meek faces a formidable last- minute challenge for the Demo- cratic nomination from investor Jeff Greene. Polls suggest Meek could lose the Aug. 24 primary in this state battered by foreclosures to a man who made billions bet- ting that Americans would default on their mortgages. “Jeff Greene has come in with giant size-12 boots and stomped all over Kendrick,” said Rick Wilson, a Republican consultant who worked for Crist 12 years ago but is not involved in this year’s cam- paign. “Greene is just killing him in the mail, on television. You can’t do a Google search about the Sen- ate race without a Jeff Greene ad popping up.” Meek responded last week with
a television ad that amounts to an all-out assault on Greene’s charac- ter, accusing the onetime Repub- lican of “betting on suffering” and being a man who “helped fuel the economic meltdown.” Meek, 43, is not without advan-
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tages. He has a compelling story and a prominent family name, en- joys the backing of the state Demo- cratic Party and has a close rela- tionship with former president Bill Clinton, who has held five fundraisers for Meek and is plan- ning to headline a rally in the clos- ing days of the primary. Anative of inner-city Miami and son of Florida’s first black con- gresswoman, Meek worked as an airport skycap and a state trooper after attending Florida A&M Uni- versity on a football scholarship. In a state where the economy is reeling, Meek says he understands folks who are hurting, as the only candidate who has punched a clock to earn a wage. As Meek stumps across South Florida, he also points out that he has overcome adversity in a way few know about. Meek is dyslexic — so severely
that he nearly flunked out of the trooper academy because he con- fused numbers on the math test, that instead of reading a briefing book he listens to an aide every morning talk about the news, and that as a Senate candidate he nev- er delivers a speech from notes, for fear of tripping over the words. “I have to work harder than the
next person,” he said over dinner here, the neighborhood where he was born and which he now repre- sents in the House. “In the real world, no one really cares about your shortcomings or your reason why things are not the way they should be.” Meek said he realized this at
Florida’s trooper academy, where he would sit in a bathroom stall studying for hours past lights-out to memorize numbers for the math test. “That was the first time in my life that I was really faced with a wall and saying, regardless of what the reality may be, I’ve got to figure out how to knock through this thing.” Then Meek, a 6-4 hulk of a man, paused. He had just shared some of the painful details of his dyslex- ia for the first time publicly. His voice broke and his eyes filled with tears. He patted them dry with his linen napkin and apologized for getting emotional. “I’ve walked up to mountains and I’ve walked up to them every day,” he said. The Senate race, he said, “is just a new one.”
Struggle to connect Greene hopes to capitalize on
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what some national Democrats view as a lackluster, unfocused campaign by Meek. Though he’s been at it for about 19 months, Meek has failed to convince many in Washington that he has either the message or the money to break
through in a diverse, costly state of more than 18 million people. That view has been hardened by Meek’s failure to exploit the turmoil with- in the Republican Party and lock up Democratic voters before Crist began wooing them. Some in Meek’s campaign say
many have written off the con- gressman because of his race; no African American has ever won statewide office in Florida. “I am offended by the number of Democrats that say this guy who has done everything right — a state trooper, a state legislator who passed limits on class sizes in Flor- ida, a congressman who has taken a lot of political risks to support al- most the entire Barack Obama agenda — can’t win,” said Steve Murphy, a media consultant work- ing for Meek. “Why are they mak- ing that supposition? Because he’s an African American.” Meek’s colleagues in the Con- gressional Black Caucus have crit- icized President Obama for not do- ing more to boost a potentially groundbreaking campaign. The White House is sending Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to Florida next week to help Meek raise mon- ey. Yet Democrats continue to gravitate toward Crist, who since leaving the GOP in April has re- fashioned his campaign with an al- most-liberal agenda. “I’m very fond of Kendrick Meek and to not support the Democrat is a first for me, but I truly think Charlie is the best man for this job,” said Lance Block, a major Democratic donor who recently opened his home for a $4,800-a- person fundraiser for Crist.
Behind in polls
In a three-way race, recent polls show Meek trailing about 10 points behind Crist and Rubio. But the data are more troubling in the Democratic primary,
where
Greene has surged past Meek, 33 percent to 23 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll re- leased Thursday. Meek’s view is that once voters
get to know him, he will surge. If he gets within striking distance of Rubio, the theory goes, Democrats will abandon Crist in favor of one of their own. But that’s a big if. Since launch- ing his bid on the April 30 filing deadline, Greene has poured more than $6 million of his own money into the race, casting himself on the airwaves as a political outsider who knows how to bring new jobs to a state shackled by 11.4 percent unemployment. At a Democratic party dinner last weekend in Hollywood, Greene said: “I’ve lived the Amer- ican dream. Unfortunately, be- cause of Washington’s failures, too many Americans live the Amer- ican nightmare.” It’s a bold line coming from a man who bet on the housing market to collapse. The audience of 1,100 gave Greene tep- id applause, in stark contrast to the roaring ovation Meek enjoyed when he spoke an hour later. Meek has been playing to his base. “Of the four major candi- dates, including my Democratic opponent, I am the only candidate that hasn’t run as a Republican in the past,” he says over and over. It’s his go-to line, which he follows up by saying he’s the only candidate who was against offshore oil dril- ling before and after the gulf spill, the only one who fought for small- er class sizes, the only one who worked for health-care reform. Meek’s pedigree has brought him controversy. He helped deliver federal funding for a biopharma- ceutical park while the developer hired Carrie Meek as a consultant and leased her a Cadillac Escalade. The project was never built and Meek has said his mother’s role had nothing to do with his effort, but Greene has seized on the epi- sode to paint him as crooked. After a full day of campaigning last week, Meek arrived home to the familiar streets of Liberty City and stepped into a union hall to the chants of his constituents. “We live in the world of low ex-
pectations,” he told them. “We know what people think when we set out and do things. But we’ve seen amazing things done.”
ruckerp@washpost.com
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