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Trying to catch up in fundraising, McCain visits Tampa

By Mike Donila, Times Staff Writer
In print: Tuesday, April 29, 2008

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Sen. John McCain returned to Florida this week — not as an outspent and outorganized underdog, as he was in January — but as the presumptive Republican nominee.

The Arizona senator's three-day campaign swing brings him to Tampa's H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center today, where he will outline his health care plan.

He's also raising money in Tampa, as well as in Fort Myers, Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Ocean Ridge in South Florida.

McCain will need every dollar he can get between now and November. Democratic Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are far ahead of him in fundraising and have been throughout the campaign.

Floridians haven't seen much of McCain since his come-from-behind primary win in January. He has returned to the Sunshine State only once, for two days earlier this month in Pensacola and Jacksonville.

But he'll be here more starting in May, campaign officials say.

Buzz Jacobs, McCain's former South Carolina state director, is opening shop in Tallahassee to serve as his regional director for the Southeast. And the campaign expects to put more offices and field officers in place in coming months.

"Win Florida and you will probably win this election," said Rick Wilson, a GOP strategist in Tallahassee. "I don't think you can expect the McCain campaign to kick back here."

In Tampa today, McCain will talk about how employers can play a larger role in providing health care choices, campaign spokesman Jeff Sadosky said.

McCain plans to highlight the success of Safeway, a California-based grocery chain that reduced overall costs by shifting its focus to preventative health care spending. Deductibles rose, but more services are covered and some workers saw premiums drop.

• • •

McCain is in an interesting spot. The national spotlight is almost exclusively on the unprecedented race for the Democratic nomination between Clinton and Obama, which is unlikely to be resolved by primary voters.

McCain, who won the GOP nomination not with a multistate strategy but rather with a few early state wins and a high national profile, must now construct the state-by-state operations he found little need for in the primary race.

With that, some observers say, McCain has been helped by the prolonged Clinton-Obama skirmish. Not to mention the controversial mess the Democrats have with Florida's primary election results, which don't officially count but would give Clinton a pivotal win if they did.

While everyone watches "the world's most fascinating political reality show," McCain can expand his base, said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

Sadosky said McCain has spent recent weeks reaching out to voters in rural parts of Alabama, Ohio, Kentucky, Arkansas and Louisiana.

"These are areas that don't see Republican candidates for president very often," said Sadosky. "They're areas that all too often only hear from the government when there's a natural catastrophe or economic troubles. They're areas all too often forgotten by the government."

Although the Democrats have the advantage of having spent this winter and spring building robust ground operations in nearly every significant state, his advocates say McCain has time to gain ground.

"Most folks are not all political all the time," said Roger Austin, a Republican political consultant in Gainesville who supports McCain. "They know what's going on — like they know football or baseball season is happening — but they don't really tune in until the playoffs."

The "real hurly-burly of the campaign" begins after Labor Day, Austin said, when the Democratic nominee is determined.

Rep. Kathy Castor, a Tampa Democrat who supports Obama, counters that the intensity of the fight for the Democratic nomination will strengthen the eventual nominee by preparing him or her for attacks.

"Otherwise those attacks come at the last minute from the McCain campaign," she said. "It's hard to do something about it at that point."

• • •

At the moment, McCain needs to focus on his fundraising. He has raised more than $76-million, but that's about a third of Obama's $235-million and a little less than half of Clinton's total. In March, McCain raised $15.4-million — again about a third of Obama's March total and about $5-million less than Clinton.

Brian Ballard, an influential Tallahassee lobbyist who is McCain's state finance chairman and national finance co-chairman, said many Republican donors are coming late to the party.

But they will come, he said. McCain is still uniting the party, Ballard said, but by Labor Day a unified Republican base will flood the McCain coffers.

McCain still is considering using public financing, which would make about $84-million in donated public cash available to his campaign. But the downside is that using that money means adhering to spending limits, and his Democratic opponent is likely to have much more cash on hand.

How much more is anybody's guess. But as in years past, both sides say records will be broken.

"There is no upper boundary," said Wilson, the Republican strategist. "Imagine a number, and somebody will pass it."

Times news researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.