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The Debate's Impact
According to the Commission on Presidential Debates, the reasons that it selected St. Petersburg as one of the three debate sites included the city's civic enthusiasm and superb waterfront facilities.
Those certainly contributed to the choice, but Chiles - as well as many other observers - believe that growing national anxiety over the federal old-age safety net also played a role in the commission's decision. Nowhere is the anxiety running higher than in Florida, with the nation's largest percentage of older voters. In fact, so great was the concern that by summer's end, polls showed the state up for grabs for only the third time since the 1940s. "The inevitable focus of this campaign on issues involving senior citizens has made Florida more important than it has been in a couple of decades," says Robert Joffee, director of the Mason-Dixon Florida Poll.
"Florida is going to be one of the pivotal states for both candidates," agrees Darryl Paulson, a political science professor at the University of South Florida's St. Petersburg campus.
If entitlements really are climbing to the top of voters' worry list, it could mean that the state, once reliably Republican in presidential elections, will remain up for grabs for the foreseeable future. That's because Democrats have proved themselves especially adept at exploiting concerns about entitlements. And those concerns are likely to be around for years, even decades.
"You can't address the future of the country without addressing what Medicare and Medicaid will look like 15 or 20 years from now, when you have a huge aging population," explains Jim Towey, the state's outspoken former social services chief, who now heads the Florida Commission on Aging with Dignity.
University of South Florida professor Susan MacManus has written a book entitled "Young Versus Old," contending that national politics increasingly will be marked by a generational battle over entitlements and the taxes needed to pay for them. She says Florida already is leading the way in the debate. As of late summer, according to MacManus, "the group pulling over toward Clinton was older Republican and independent women. And the issues are Social Security and Medicare. I think it's true all over but especially in Florida." Those issues have been especially resonant for retirees along the Gulf Coast, where moderate Midwestern Republicans have flocked for decades. In GOP-dominated Sarasota and Pinellas counties, Democratic candidates recently have scored breakthrough victories, some of them apparently spurred by worries about the GOP agenda on entitlements. For example, Chiles managed to carry Pinellas in 1994, after his campaign staged a phony phone-bank effort featuring callers who misidentified themselves as members of old-age advocacy groups and warned of Republican intentions to cut entitlements.
Some Florida business people, especially those whose companies depend on federal dollars from entitlements, voice concern. "Even some Republican members of our board have been opposed" to GOP congressional efforts for block-granting entitlements to the states, notes Ed Fortune, a lobbyist for nursing homes and assisted living facilities. "We've got to provide the care for our elderly, and we can't put it all on the back of the state to raise the money."
If the Republicans attempt to sidestep their recent efforts on Capitol Hill to cut entitlements, Ross Perot will be there to keep the issue before the public. And if the Republicans decide to appeal to voters who favor entitlement cuts, Perot can easily take that issue away by promising even deeper cuts.
Perot also stands to benefit from the huge number of new voter registrations in the months since the so-called "motor-voter" law went into effect. As of August, some 12% of these new voters declared themselves "independents" - that is, members of minority parties or with no party affiliation.
National politics isn't the only arena affected by worries over entitlements. Some analysts contend that the looming generational split even could affect Florida legislative races, stalling the steady progress the GOP has made here since the 1970s. In the 1994 election, Republicans took over the state Senate and fell short of a majority in the 120-member state House by just four seats - a margin that Republicans still expect to make up this year. The key battleground, as usual, will be the so-called I-4 corridor between the Space Coast and Tampa Bay, where 18 state House seats are being contested.
"A lot of people say, as Florida goes, so goes the South," says Sally Harrell, who managed Jeb Bush's 1994 gubernatorial race. "A lot of people look at Florida to see if the Republican trends are going to continue."
Many Democrats say it's too early to conclude that Florida holds out more long-term promise for their beleaguered party, whether on the state or federal level. "You have to look at each candidate," says Jeff Eller, a consultant who helped run Clinton's 1992 effort in Florida. But the 1996 presidential election "could break the state's pattern as staunchly Republican," contends MacManus. "We started to see the signs in '92, when Clinton almost won."
The president's campaign spent little money on Florida in 1992 and ended up losing by just two points. After coming so close, Eller says that the president developed a "mini-obsession" with the state. Clinton's interest has been manifested in a variety of political favors. For example, Miami gained the Defense Department's Southern Command, beating out Sunbelt rivals Atlanta and New Orleans. In addition, the state's other military bases have been treated especially charitably during a period of defense downsizing. Over the objections of his staff, the president also picked Miami over Texas for the Summit of the Americas two years ago.
Some Floridians - white, non-Hispanic ones - felt a sense of gratitude over the administration's new hard line on Cuban and Haitian immigration. And Hispanics could identify with the president's opposition to a provision in this year's welfare bill that cuts off benefits for legal aliens. Clinton also courted Cuban-Americans by embracing the Helms-Burton bill that allows suits against many companies doing business in Cuba.
Many of those issues are likely to come up in the debate, says Chiles. "It's a national debate, but I think they're going to try to make it Florida-friendly." Chiles, who loves nothing better than stalking wild turkeys, sums it up this way: "Florida is in the middle of the hunt. It makes it very exciting." tallahassee briefs
? Analysts are warning of a number of problems down the road for the state's gross-receipts tax on various services provided by utilities, a $560-million-a-year revenue source that pays for construction of school buildings.
One is telecommunications deregulation. As taxable phone service begins to be bundled and sold with cable TV service - which isn't subject to the gross-receipts tax - collection could become more uncertain. A related issue is the declining real cost of telecommunications services, which likely will erode the base on which the tax is charged. Telecommunications currently provide about $250 million of gross-receipts tax revenues.
Further down the road, other difficulties could crop up in collecting the gross-receipts tax on electric service, which now contributes about $300 million annually. The problems could occur if the state picks up on a trend toward deregulated "wheeling" of retail electric service. "Wheeling" would allow customers to buy power from different electricity providers. Knotty legal questions will arise when the provider is an out-of-state source.
The state already is having difficulty collecting the tax on out-of-state gas sales. Gas utility sales are the third major source of gross-receipts dollars. A task force appointed by the governor is considering changes to the gross-receipts tax, as well as other taxes on utilities and telecommunications, including Internet services. Its recommendations are likely to become a major issue in the 1997 Legislature.
Construction industry leaders continue to worry about the proliferation of different local building codes around the state. As a result of the concerns, Gov. Chiles recently formed a commission to study code issues, including the possibility of a uniform statewide building code.
"Our members that do business statewide find themselves in a dilemma when they go from place to place," says Len Tylka, a West Palm Beach engineer and third vice president of the Florida Home Builders Association. "We're kind of glad to see it making some movement."
Some builders worry that a statewide code could increase hurricane-resistance standards for inland counties that don't need them, thereby raising prices. But Tylka points out that pending efforts to create national codes could force standards even higher.
The task force also is likely to address a related concern: that building trade unions are using their influence to include hiring requirements in local building codes in order to benefit their members.
Business Beat - Week of May 3rd
