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GOP Waiting For Call By Mr. Decisive

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By TOM JACKSON, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 27, 2008

Updated: 01/26/2008 09:55 pm

Bill Bunting, Florida Republican operative and all-around force of nature, cups his hand over the cell phone for just a second - "Hold on, dere, Guvnuh, I gotta take dis call" - then returns to the line to confess that he is just like at least 10 percent of the state's GOP voters ahead of Tuesday's Sunshine State presidential primary: undeclared, uncommitted and undecided.

Drifting since former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson aborted his failure-to-launch campaign, Bunting - whose support for the make-believe New York district attorney was early, passionate and, alas, rare - has found himself, like other needful Republicans, aching for someone to love.

Unlike Florida's other 382,000-odd fence-sitting Republicans, however, all those campaigns toward which he is resolutely lukewarm have his cell phone number. He's in everybody's circle, on everybody's favorites list.

Not simply because Bunting is head of the Republican Party in Pasco County, one of the state's keystone counties. Instead, operatives among the GOP's Big Three campaigns - Huckabee, McCain, Romney - are eager to know for whom Bunting's database of more than 76,000 gun-owning, Second-Amendment-revering, keenly motivated, predominately Republican worker ants statewide will be unleashed. (Rudy Giuliani, who advocates some curbs on gun rights, need not apply.)

As for the rest, says Bunting, "I need to look 'em in da eye."

Awaiting The Rallying Cry

In a tight cramble certain to pivot on turnout, how such an army responds could be decisive. All who clamor to become leader of the Free World want Bunting on their side.

Not bad for a former barkeep, cabby and nominal Democrat from Queens, N.Y., who rarely stuck his chin inside a voting booth before he came to Florida. Now, alongside his hyperkinetic bride and soul mate Ann, the lawyer, parliamentarian and unpublished author, he leads with his jaw - the man can flat jabber - leaving the ambivalent, the equivocating and, naturally, the opposition, bobbing in his wake.

Which is why Bunting's own indecision heading toward Tuesday is so personally vexing. For a political powerhouse who sees the world divided into so many flooring tiles, and who regards those around him as either on his tile or off his tile - one foot doesn't count - this experience of straddling and hesitation is as foreign as a dish of Khmer-fried tarantulas.

To be sure, in the sprint to the primary, everyone has wanted the ear of this would-be kingmaker. Lately, he has lunched with former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating (well-regarded as vice-presidential material, and "a really down-to-earth guy," Bunting says) while Danny Burgess, the kid councilman from Zephyrhills, learned at his elbow; fenced over an unsecured phone line with state Sen. Daniel Webster, a Mike Huckabee advocate; and, in a chance meeting, exchanged public pleasantries with Florida Democratic Party Chairwoman Karen Thurman, the woman he helped oust from the U.S. House of Representatives in 2002 on behalf of Ginny Brown-Waite.

In Florida, That's (727) BUNTING

Bunting and other fence-riding county GOP directors can scarcely believe their sudden popularity. Their conversations go something like this: "How many times you been called by Romney's people today? How 'bout Huckabee's? McCain's?"

Of course, one way to quiet the ring tone would be to declare an endorsement. But this one time, it seems, it's more prudent to be pursued.

Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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