Ask yourself: Would you be more likely to read this story if it were accompanied by a photo of Republican National Committee chairman Mike Duncan, Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman or Arnold Schwarzenegger? Or how about Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill or Ben Affleck?
It's not just an academic question. We're entering the phase of the presidential campaign where candidate stand-ins will descend on the Sunshine State for the final 90 days of the campaign.
On Tuesday, it was RNC chairman Duncan stopping in South Tampa to rev up the ground troops for John McCain, and in a meeting with reporters, cheerfully questioning Barack Obama's readiness to lead.
Lieberman, McCain's most loyal Democratic campaigner, makes a cameo in the Tampa Bay area today, raising money at the Avila home of Mark and Christel Yaffe. He also will campaign with Jewish voters in South Florida, which has practically become a second home for Lieberman.
"Surrogates are an absolutely vital component of the campaign, because they can't be everywhere at once, and if you have the right surrogate delivering the right message, you can earn your media (attention) in a very strategic way,'' said Karl Koch, a veteran campaign strategist who helped run Bill Clinton's 1996 Florida campaign and Al Gore's in 2000.
Of course, not all surrogates are created equal.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, for instance, is scheduled to campaign for Obama in South Florida on Aug. 21, and she is the kind of political superstar whose appearance will be an event in itself. John Kerry's brother, Cam Kerry, barnstorming Florida in 2004? Not so much.
In 2004, Florida reporters in big media markets tended to be less than enthralled with invitations to interview former Montana Gov. Marc Racicot, Bush-Cheney's campaign chairman. But Racicot was all over the local front pages when he campaigned across the smaller markets in the Panhandle.
Then there's the risk that a surrogate veers off message or creates the wrong kind of buzz.
On Wednesday, the Straight Talk campaign bus Lieberman was riding in was involved in a fender bender in Miami — not exactly the kind of news that McCain wanted him to generate.
And last month, former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina, a McCain surrogate, became more of a distraction than a help when she waded into a discussion of Viagra — not an ideal topic in the context of a 71-year-old candidate.
"Let me give you a real, live example, which I've been hearing a lot about from women," Fiorina said. "There are many health insurance plans that will cover Viagra but won't cover birth control medication. Those women would like a choice."
It turns out McCain had voted against measures that would have required insurance companies to cover birth control, and McCain wound up uncomfortably dragged into the Viagra/birth control discussion.
"It's something that I had not thought much about," McCain mumbled.
Adam C. Smith can be reached at asmith@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8241.
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