They each sent sons to Rice University in Houston and are passionate about economic development, but otherwise the men seeking to become Florida's 42nd governor share little more than a preference to be called by nicknames. One is a proud rural Southerner, the other an Internet-savvy suburban businessman. One wrestles with the privilege and burden of his family's famous name, the other with an inability to win statewide races despite a distinguished 30-year record of public service. But how would they do the governor's job? How do they make decisions? Do their reputations reflect their character and actions? In the profiles of Jeb Bush and Buddy MacKay that follow, Florida Trend has organized information on the two around themes and presents it side-by-side, with an eye toward both analysis and fairness. Readers can compare the two men's backgrounds, personalities and records, free of the distraction of the daily political campaign spin.
What's He Like?
Methodical and intense, Bush turns on the charm with a crowd but is otherwise cool, businesslike and, sometimes, arrogant. Organized and no-nonsense in meetings, he'll stare down hard at you through his glasses if you don't get to the point quickly enough. Extremely driven: He finished college in 2-1/2 years because "school was not very demanding or very interesting. I wanted to be married, I wanted to be a father, I wanted to be working." Competitive: He doesn't like to lose, whether a golf game or an election. Not prone to self-analysis, he doesn't wear his heart on his sleeve, and rarely raises his voice. Bright, although not intellectual. Says T. Willard Fair, CEO of the Urban League of Greater Miami, "He's so smart he doesn't mind not knowing everything." A master of the personal touch, he remembers names of children and secretaries and writes gracious thank-you notes. Thin-skinned, although he says he's tougher than he used to be. Contrary to popular belief, he does have a sense of humor. Invited by a friend to an ACLU dinner - his presence alone was remarkable - he found the program cover featured an illustration of a nude man with a huge penis (the ACLU sued on behalf of the student whose art had been covered up by school officials). Joked Bush, "Is this what liberals look like?"
MacKay comes across as boyish despite his age, brainy despite his slow Southern drawl. He has a wry sense of humor and laughs easily - often at himself or at the foibles of government. He's kind, but not so kind that he can't chew someone out. His gentle style belies a temper that's hottest when he feels he's been betrayed. Those who know him say he's a deep thinker who does his homework and a progressive who likes innovative ideas - as long as they don't cross his own. MacKay is often likened to former Gov. Reubin Askew, another analytical Presbyterian with a well-defined vision of what's best for Florida. Like Askew, MacKay can seem judgmental, and can butt heads with others who hold firm convictions. Jim Towey, the former HRS chief who clashed with MacKay over the agency's reorganization, calls MacKay one of the smartest people he's ever met - but not the most flexible: "He's book-smart and he can think way ahead to what things are going to look like in three or four years," says Towey, president of Florida's Commission on Aging with Dignity. "But because of that, he can be very hard to work with. He feels he sees the right way something should get done, and that's the only way."
What's He Known For?
Bush's political identity is based primarily on being the president's son and on his unsuccessful 1994 run for governor. The Bush name, he contends, has been both blessing and curse - it has opened doors, but also attracted opportunists looking to use him as well as critics who say that his surname is his only real asset. Bush describes his decision to move to Miami from Houston to escape his father's shadow as "faulty thinking. The shadow didn't stop at the city limits. Of course, no one told me that." Nowadays, Bush doesn't hesitate to name-drop during campaign speeches. In Florida, Bush has a low civic profile and is known much more for his political activities - head of the Dade GOP in the mid-1980s, campaign officer for his father and for former Gov. Bob Martinez. After losing the governor's race in 1994, Bush created the Foundation for Florida's Future, a conservative think tank through which he lobbied for charter school legislation and a cut in unemployment taxes. He also co-wrote a book, "Profiles in Character," featuring 14 Floridians including former Gov. Leroy Collins.
MacKay's reputation is that of an effective, principled official who never quite lived up to the golden boy image of his early career. In the Florida Legislature, he was voted most outstanding legislator seven times in nine years, more often than any other state lawmaker in history. Colleagues say he took a statewide, long-term view even while representing rural north Florida. In Congress as well, MacKay was known for voting principle over politics; he fought to stop the Cross Florida Barge Canal on environmental grounds, for example, even as many powerful Florida Democrats pushed the project. MacKay's momentum, however, seemed to freeze with his citrus crops in 1983. Financial losses kept him out of the governor's race in 1986, and two years later he lost a race for U.S. Senate with 49.6% of the vote. MacKay is probably the most influential lieutenant governor in Florida history. But while Chiles always referred to his administration as "Buddy and I," the public rarely saw past the genial governor to the guy mopping up the state's messiest problems: the HRS reorganization; the administration's "right-sizing" that merged and privatized agencies; the financial recovery plan for Miami when the city spun into fiscal crisis in 1996.
Where Is He On The Political Spectrum?
BUSH - Firmly in the far right, with beliefs in "limited government and entrepreneurial capitalism" at the core of his ideological framework. A trustee of the conservative Heritage Foundation, he supports school vouchers and opposes abortion with few exceptions. While Bush is "passionate" on moral issues, says supporter John Delaney, mayor of Jacksonville, he's also "pragmatic like Reagan." Stung by portrayals of himself as an extremist in 1994, Bush has clearly taken pains to express his views less stridently in 1998. He surprised many with his first pick for lieutenant governor, Sandra Mortham, who is pro-abortion rights, and with his heavy campaigning in traditional Democratic strongholds. Bush hasn't changed his colors, however; the kinder, gentler Jeb portrayed in the media is merely a more seasoned politician intent on avoiding hot-button topics. If the 1998 Bush has changed, it's in how he believes his conservative agenda should be carried out. Whereas in 1994 he preached the standard conservative rhetoric on cutting government services, he says now that the way to limit government is to "lessen the demand" for its services. That means supporting such prevention-oriented government programs as the Chiles/MacKay-backed Healthy Families, which pairs specially trained state workers with parents of children considered at risk of abuse or neglect. "He has tempered his philosophy with real education about the issues," says Steve Bunker, president of Holmes Regional Medical Center. "He seems to have gotten past the attitude that everything in Tallahassee is evil.''
MACKAY - Derided with "Hey, Buddy, You're a Liberal!" by Republican opponent Connie Mack in the 1988 Senate race, MacKay's politics are much more sophisticated than the slogan. In the U.S. House, MacKay and Mack actually had similar voting records. MacKay was an early leader of the balanced-budget movement and often sided with the GOP on fiscal issues. He voted with Ronald Reagan more than most Democrats, supporting the president's budget-cutting efforts but fighting him on other issues, such as aid to the contras in Nicaragua.
MacKay was an early organizer of the Democratic Leadership Council, a national group of moderate Democrats trying to forge a pro-business agenda. As lieutenant governor, he shepherded the Chiles-MacKay ticket's campaign pledge to reinvent government, leading, among other things, the privatization of the state's Department of Commerce, now the public-private Enterprise Florida, and the streamlining of Florida's administrative rules and environmental regulations.
MacKay favors the death penalty and says he wants to continue to make government "less of a hassle" for business owners. While he supported billion-dollar tax increases for Florida in the aftermath of recession-induced cutbacks in 1992, MacKay has made a no-new-taxes pledge this campaign. His running-mate choice of former state Sen. Rick Dantzler, who is more conservative than MacKay, makes clear he still is trying to outrun the L-label. "If you look at my record, in some ways I'm more for trying to keep government out of people's personal lives than Jeb is," says MacKay, who supports abortion rights.
Opposition Research
Inexperience, inexperience, inexperience. Democrats call Bush a lightweight anointed by the state GOP party apparatus who lacks the knowledge and decision-making skills to run the state. Bush, they say, knows only how to campaign, using the Foundation for Florida's Future as a thinly veiled PR machine. His picks for running mates have been easy fodder: Legislator Tom Feeney in 1994 was seen as a right-wing kook, and Secretary of State Sandra Mortham left the '98 ticket over ethical lapses. Democrats also snipe at Bush's judgment and ability to sniff out trouble in his business dealings. One example: Bush's call to a federal bureaucrat on behalf of an HMO kingpin who turned out to be a crook became a topic of 1987 congressional hearings and a campaign issue in 1994.
The Republican rap on MacKay is that he turns to Big Government for bail-outs. After the record-breaking freeze in 1983 that wiped out fruit and vegetable crops across the state, MacKay, then a congressman, helped speed up disaster loans for Florida farmers, including his family, and worked diligently to improve agricultural disaster programs. MacKay also voted for measures backed by the savings & loan industry while he was a $1,000-a-month member of the board of directors of Mid-State Federal Savings and Loan of Ocala. Republicans say they are befuddled by MacKay's no-new-taxes promise, which they maintain is inconsistent with his vow to beef up public school spending. One feature on the Bush campaign's slick Web site: an interactive "Buddy MacKay tax of the day."
Turning Points
The first "defining moment" of Bush's life was meeting his wife, Columba. He was 17 and an exchange student in Leon, Mexico. "Because of her, I learned to speak Spanish. Because of her, I had an interest in Latin America. She got me started thinking about things." A more recent turning point for Bush was losing the 1994 governors race. After the intensity of the campaign, losing and having to go back to work as a full-time husband and father was a shock. "I started looking at me and what kind of man I was, what my priorities were," Bush says. "My faith was strengthened. I think I'm more connected to my kids now."
What MacKay calls his defining moment involves not a formative experience in his youth but recent history: Joining Chiles on a campaign to reform state government in 1990. Chiles gave him unprecedented power as lieutenant governor, making him the state's chief operating officer. "We did an unfriendly takeover of this huge corporation; we did it with stockholder support, and we did it when it was collapsing," says MacKay, who led the Chiles administration's reduction of agency rules by 50%. "I really think it's one of the greatest success stories in America."
Toughest Decision
Whether to run for governor again, after losing in 1994. "It was a very difficult process," Bush says. "The decision related more to my personal life, whether I could fulfill my parental obligations. I looked at that issue 50 different ways before I felt comfortable with it."
Like the majority of Florida senators in the early 1970s, MacKay opposed the Equal Rights Amendment. His position reflected the values of his mostly rural, 16-county district. But just before the Senate was to vote on the ERA in 1974, Ann Marston, wife of UF President Robert Q. Marston, asked MacKay to meet privately in her Gainesville home with a group of women ranging from socialites to telephone operators. MacKay agreed, and in one afternoon, the women convinced him he was wrong. "I came to see that these were not philosophical issues," MacKay says, "but real issues about what it means to be an American and what it means to be free." But it was tough to go home and tell his conservative constituents he'd changed his mind. The only senator north of Orlando who supported the ERA (it failed that year in the Senate, 19 to 21, and never passed in Florida), his position cost him. Bumper stickers chided: "MacKay: Please Don't Draft Our Daughters."
Education
Education reform has been a central theme of Bush's campaign; as of late July, he had visited 192 schools. He wants to inject "entrepreneurial thinking" into education by cutting bureaucracy and handing more control over budgets and programs to principals and teachers, along with creating performance-based incentives. He supports charter schools and vouchers for disadvantaged kids and has outlined a plan for upgrading the performance of poor and minority students.
Like Bush, MacKay sees education as a business issue. To build the state's work force, MacKay says he wants better childcare for today's workers and public education for tomorrow's: "Among the top reasons companies decide not to move to Florida is concern about public education and childcare." MacKay says government incentives can motivate businesses to give employees better access to childcare and can push childcare centers to improve their curricula and worker training. MacKay, who led Florida's Blueprint 2000 education reform, says his top priority is to ease overcrowding and other problems in public schools, insisting the voucher system proposed by Bush is a "fundamental mistake for this state."
The Candidate in Black and White
Bush received just a sliver of the black vote in 1994 and set out to remake his image. A rift in the Democratic Party over the ouster of Rep. Willie Logan as the party's leader in the House provided an opening, and Bush has since met with Logan eight or nine times. He says he's campaigned "more in the black community than any Republican since Abe Lincoln." A recent "African American Community Outreach" event at the Governors Club of Palm Beach drew more than 300 people, and black politicians who support Bush include Democrat Mary B. Hooks, a West Palm Beach City Commissioner, and Orlando City Commissioner Ernest Page. "Democrats have taken African Americans for granted, but Republicans haven't even tried," Bush says. "There's a lot that Republicans need to learn." Helping Bush is his emphasis on education reform, a theme that resonates deeply in Florida's poor, urban and mostly black neighborhoods. The charter school Bush co-founded with Fair of the Urban League sits in the heart of Miami's Liberty City, the site of devastating race riots in 1980. Democrats and other critics say Bush's affiliation with Fair is just one more campaign trick, but Fair says he knows differently. "I like him very much and, on top of that, I trust him," Fair says. "The bottom line is, he loves my children, and my children know that."
University of Florida law student George Allen was being subjected to screams of "Nigger, go home!" at Gator football games when he met MacKay in 1960. MacKay was president of the law school's student bar association. Many members wanted to keep the association as white as the block of seats that law students laid claim to on the 50-yard line. But MacKay fought for Allen's seat in the bleachers as well as the bar. "It was a highly emotional deal, but there was never a question in Buddy's mind," recalls his friend Ausley. "He said, 'He's our friend, he's our classmate, and he's going anywhere we're going.'"
MacKay believed segregation was inconsistent with the Bible's teaching to embrace all people, and told his pastor so when he returned to Ocala from law school and found First Presbyterian's pews still all-white. In 1965, he and Anne left their lifelong place of worship to help start an integrated Presbyterian church, Fort King, where they are still part of the 400-member congregation.
Allen, a Fort Lauderdale lawyer who was the first black to graduate from UF, says it's been painful to watch African Americans criticize MacKay for the ouster of Logan as House speaker designate. "You shouldn't hurt someone with that type of history to curry favor with someone who has no history at all," Allen says. Logan counters that African Americans feel the Democratic Party, including MacKay, has taken them for granted. "Today I'm not fighting for civil rights or integrating churches," he says. "We appreciate it, but we can't rely on yesterday's achievements to build tomorrow."
Unlikely Supporters
First Amendment lawyer Florence Rivas describes her politics as "to the left of Karl Marx." Introduced through mutual friend J. Allison DeFoor, she and Bush quickly became e-mail pals and are now fast friends. Though they clash on issues such as assisted suicide, which she supports, Rivas calls Bush an "impressive human being" with "an amazing work ethic" who as governor would "create a culture of accountability that does not exist now." Says her husband and law partner Robert, "He's impossible to hate, but Florence likes to forget how conservative he is."
A retired country music station owner, former Ocala Mayor James Kirk is a self-described staunch conservative and registered Republican who campaigned for Jeb Bush four years ago. Now that MacKay's on the ticket, however, he's launching "Republicans for MacKay." He sees MacKay as friendly to business, and he believes in the lieutenant governor's vision for public school education reform and economic development. "I base my vote on the man, and I want a man who has spent his whole life in a concentrated effort to make Florida a better state," says Kirk. "I love Jeb Bush's momma and daddy, but we just can't afford to let a talent like Buddy MacKay get put up on the shelf somewhere."
Unlikely Detractors
Miami engineer Lundy Clarke is Republican and runs her own business. So why is she supporting MacKay instead of the younger and allegedly more business-friendly Bush? Bush hasn't done anything particularly offensive, she says. He just hasn't done anything at all.
"He's a person with no history," says Clarke, criticizing what she sees as Bush's low civic profile in his adopted base of Miami. "He doesn't even have experience in his own hometown. He hasn't been at the forefront of any civic anything. To me, it's almost a no-brainer.''
Grassroots environmentalist Linda Young of Tallahassee was so enthusiastic about a Chiles/MacKay ticket eight years ago that she held a press conference with the candidates on the 22nd floor of the Capitol to espouse their commitment to air and water quality. Today, that memory embarrasses her. Young, southeast regional coordinator for the U.S. Clean Water Network, was among a circle of environmental advisors MacKay met with regularly. She says she was never invited back after she criticized the administration's choice of Virginia Wetherell to lead the streamlined Department of Environmental Protection and after she argued about the impact of environmental deregulation. "It became very clear that if I was going to complain, I wouldn't be invited anymore," Young recalls. "If you're not go-along, get-along, you're out." The lifelong Democrat says she is so dismayed by what she sees as the dismantling of environmental rules and regulations in Florida over the past eight years that she won't vote for MacKay in November - even though she feels Bush would be worse. "Bush could do a lot of damage," Young says. "But how much more damage could he do?"
Leadership
Gov. LeRoy Collins (1955-61) said Florida's governor should possess the following attributes:
"1. His integrity (this embraces more than his honesty, it means the wholeness of his dedication to serve well the public interest);
2. His ability to make decisions promptly and decisively (this is very important because pressures tend to encourage procrastination and equivocation to avoid offending people and interests);
3. His administrative competence to see that his decisions are acted upon and his goals achieved; and
4. His 'style' or 'charisma' or 'magnetic' qualities in his personality that add to his effectiveness as a leader. Now, a governor can do a good job and fall short on one or more of these attributes, but to be superior he needs to rate well on all four standards, I think."
Bush's strengths are his ability to inspire confidence and articulate a vision - in short, says developer Al Hoffman, "Jeb's a good salesman." For a glimpse of his movie-star quality, watch the crowd collect around him after a speech. But is there substance behind the style? In his business dealings, Bush has shown he can be an effective leader and manager who is able to rally others to help him execute his plans. He demands a lot of his staff, and, like a parent, can make his employees feel guilty by expressing disappointment. Klein, his former partner, says Bush also has skill as a mediator, serving as an internal problem-solver as Codina Group grew larger. "He has a way of being non-emotional on the issues, focusing on what's right and what's wrong and being extremely fair," Klein says. Yet starting a foundation, opening a charter school, even running a successful brokerage business, pale in complexity and consequence to presiding over a massive government bureaucracy and wrestling with numerous competing constituencies. His one government job, his year and a half as commerce secretary, was undistinguished. Hoffman, Bush's finance chairman, believes it's precisely Bush's inexperience that makes him perfect for the job. "A successful businessman has developed an ability to reason and a tendency not to take no for an answer, a mental immunity to the process of government," Hoffman says. "If Jeb weren't running for office, I would love to put him in charge of one of my companies." So why does a successful businessman chuck it all for public service? Businessman Phil Handy recalls a golf game in February 1993 when Bush broached the subject of running for governor. Handy asked why. "He told me, 'My family's not long on self-analysis. I want to govern.' It's just the thing he felt he was born to do." In evaluating Bush, Florida's voters have to decide whether that testifies to a deep-seated desire to serve the public or rather to inbred personal ambition.
During 30 years of service to the state he loves, MacKay has shown a lot more substance than style. "Buddy MacKay is not going to be the flashiest guy in the room, but he is the guy with extraordinary influence," says Dan Stengle, the governor's general counsel. Decisive and administratively competent, MacKay is the type of leader who can convince people to trust him even if they disagree with him. "Buddy is a very bold thinker, and a lot of people didn't want to hear, 'Why don't we get rid of the Department of Commerce?'," says Shelley, former community affairs secretary. "But they believed in him, and by the time he was finished, they agreed with him." Well, not everyone. The man who instills lasting loyalty in so many leaves a good-old-boy impression with others who contend he's not the leader Florida needs for the 21st century. The fracturing of the Democratic Party over MacKay's chances of beating Bush showed his record alone couldn't energize the party behind him. MacKay has lost some young Democrats - like Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle - who believe he's had his chance. And he's lost some African Americans - like Logan - who believe he's taken them for granted.
Florida's diverse voters seem to value charisma even more today than when Collins listed it 40 years ago among his four desirable attributes for a governor. MacKay's dedication to Florida and his abilities and competence in the framework of its government are clear. Whether voters believe that is enough to promote him to governor is not.