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GOP Fans Election Flames

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By WILLIAM MARCH, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 21, 2007

Video: From The Convention

ORLANDO - Some 4,000 Republican Party activists started getting fired up Saturday for the 2008 presidential election, with their four top presidential contenders there to spur them on, at the state party's convention Saturday.

Denouncing Democrats, but avoiding almost any mention of President Bush, party leaders and candidates sought to inspire their base in the state they said will be decisive in the GOP primary.

'The winner of the Republican primary in Florida in January will be the Republican nominee,' candidate Rudy Giuliani told the crowd at an afternoon rally. 'Florida is going to give us the next president of the United States.'

If they didn't mention their own party's current leader, the top Republicans repeatedly invoked the names of their opponents to fire up their crowd.

'If we do not unite ... we will watch Hillary Rodham Clinton sworn in on the Capitol steps as our president,' state party chairman Jim Greer told the crowd at the rally, drawing roars of protest.

'Their leaders are Jimmy Carter, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, John Kerry and Hillary Rodham Clinton,' he said, inciting a repeated string of boos.

But if those are the dragons, many of the Republicans attending this event haven't settled on a dragon slayer. Significant numbers are still undecided.

Veteran party worker and political consultant April Schiff of Tampa likes all of the candidates, but said she's waffling between Giuliani and Fred Thompson.

St. Petersburg delegate Sonia March also is having trouble making up her mind. 'If I could take a little of this candidate and a little of that candidate and build my own, it would be perfect,' she said.

Hillsborough County party chairman David Storck said he thinks as many as 70 percent of the 174 Hillsborough delegates to the convention - the largest single county delegation - haven't committed to a candidate.

Giuliani is leading in Florida, according to polls and the opinions of many party insiders at the convention, but several said Thompson is nearly tied and Mitt Romney is a close third.

'Even John McCain has come back some,' said Paul Senft of Haines City, one of Florida's three delegates to the Republican National Committee.

None of them see any candidate beginning to surge past the field.

Pinellas County party chairman Tony DiMatteo said Giuliani leads in his county, with its large numbers of transplanted New Yorkers and northeasterners, and that the former New York mayor would win if the election were held next week - but he's not as certain about the outcome Jan. 29.

The Republicans are meeting at an upscale resort just outside Orlando, the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort.

By the hundreds, the mostly well-heeled crowd strolled the wide, high-ceilinged hallways among spacious meeting rooms where candidates and interest groups hold receptions and corporate sponsors hold private gatherings in hospitality suites.

One of the main sponsors - its name on signs and banners throughout the convention - is the Florida Association of Realtors, a group with a substantial interest in the property tax issues now before the Florida Legislature.

Today, the top four candidates plus Mike Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, Tom Tancredo, and Ron Paul will appear in a debate staged at the convention and televised live on Fox News. Sam Brownback, expected to appear, dropped out of the race Friday.

While repeatedly referring to the GOP as the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, party leaders and candidates have almost completely avoided any mention of Bush.

Party leaders said the convention crowd is not gloomy over the president's current low popularity ratings.

'Nobody's dwelling on that,' Senft said. 'I think it comes down to whether we'll be better with Hillary or one of these guys,' meaning the Republican candidates.

Regardless of any worries about Bush, Republicans here are gleeful about the problems of Florida Democrats, whose leading presidential candidates have all agreed to boycott the state until the primary because of its earlier primary date.

As a result, none of the candidates will appear at the Democrats' state convention, also in Orlando, next weekend.

'The Democrats, they're depressed,' Greer told the crowd at the rally. 'Nobody's coming next week.'

Reporter William March can be reached at (813) 259-7761 or wmarch@tampatrib.com.

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