Bush brothers are hanging Mrs Chad out to dry
By Francis Harris in Washington
(Filed: 04/09/2006)
For many Democrats, Katherine Harris is the Cruella De Vil of American
politics, a smiling assassin whose oversight of the Florida recount handed
George W Bush the White House in 2000.
Katherine Harris
Katherine Harris's campaign is described as farcically bad
For many Republicans, memories of that political dogfight six years ago are
precisely the reason she should be elevated to a more prominent national role.
Tomorrow, they have a chance to do just that.
Florida’s Republicans hold a primary election to decide choose their candidate
for the US senate.
Opinion polls say she will easily win the vote of adoring activists and so
represent the party in the midterm elections.
“We’re going to win in Tuesday’s primary and we’re going to win in November,”
she told a local newspaper.
“Losing is not an option. It’s not even a thought.”
But if she prevails, it will be despite ferocious opposition from the very
people who might be expected to love her most.
The Bush dynasty has done everything in their power to block Mrs Harris’s
campaign.
Their very public falling out has caused a disastrous public split in a party
normally known for ruthless discipline and ensured that the Democrats will hang
onto what might have been one of the senate’s swing seats.
All year, the Bush clan has tried to get Mrs Harris to withdraw. President’s
Bush’s right hand man, Karl Rove, even chaired meetings to find an alternative
candidate.
When that failed, the president’s brother, Florida’s Republican governor Jeb
Bush went public with his doubts.
With polls showing her 30 points behind senator Nelson, the governor predicted
that Mrs Harris was heading for defeat.
“I just don’t think she can win,” the governor said.
“Unfortunately, through no fault of her own perhaps, the press coverage is all
about the problems in her campaign.”
Supporters of Mrs Harris, 49, struck back with accusations of betrayal.
One anonymous backer sourly noted “all she has done for the Bush family and the
Republican Party”.
The anti-Harris campaign amounted to “a stab in the back”, he told the
congressional newspaper, the Hill.
Even so, the Harris campaign is widely described as farcically bad.
The press has gleefully chronicled every disastrous new development in her
stuttering campaign.
“Quite honestly, the Titanic was in better condition,” said Republican pollster
David Johnson.
Mrs Harris’s staff have left in droves. Ed Rollins, who once worked for
President Ronald Reagan, left the campaign earlier in the year.
Speaking after the latest mass walkout, he told the Herald-Tribune newspaper:
“Katherine is probably the worst micromanager I have ever seen and her
instincts are 100 percent wrong. After a while you say, ‘Why am I putting up
with this crap?’”
The complaints of staffers have become the stuff of political legend.
Mrs Harris, a coffee addict, demanded maps of local Starbucks be provided for
campaign tours and berated an aide who failed to deliver a triple venti latte,
no fat, no foam, two sweeteners.
She allegedly threw a mobile phone at the wall, smashed a computer keyboard
into a desk, bemoaned the absence of volunteers from America’s top universities
and addressed young campaign staff as “stupid”.
Campaign meetings have provided rich moments of public humiliation.
At one recent meeting, journalists were enticed with the promise that senior
Republicans would endorse Mrs Harris.
When they failed to appear, the candidate said there had been confusion over
the venue.
A tree had fallen on the first booked site, an airport hanger, and another had
been found at the last moment.
According to the Palm Beach Post, an airport spokesman denied that: “No tree
fell on a hanger,” he said.
Harris staffer later said she had been misinformed by an aide.
No element of the campaign has been spared, with critics even assailing the 49
year-old for her make-up and a choice of figure-hugging clothing allegedly
designed to empahasise her feminine attributes.
There are issues of substance too.
Jewish Republicans were outraged when Mrs Harris explained the importance of
her Christian faith:
“If you’re not electing Christians, then in essence you’re going to legislate
sin,” she said.
Next day came a lengthy explanation of her pro-Jewish instincts and a statement
of support for the state of Israel.
Yet despite a withering crossfire from both sides of the spectrum, Mrs Harris
says she is misunderstood and will fight on.
Critics had gone over the top, she told one reporter. “All you hear about it is
what I wear, you don’t hear about what I stand for. “Other campaigns have a
million campaign managers and staffers leave. We’ve moved on. We’ve gotten rid
of those who were working against us.”
But her defiance makes no impression, even among likely allies.
The reliably Right-wing Washington Times says she faces disastrous defeat by
the Democrats: “She will be waxed like a tile floor in a Mop-n-Glo ad.,” a
columnist predicted.
A Democratic blogger put it more brutally still, referring to the famously
bloody civil American war campaigns of the Union general William T Sherman.
“It’s increasingly clear to observers that the Harris for Senate campaign has
become, in essence, a re-enactment of Sherman’s march through Atlanta, with
Harris playing Sherman and her campaign playing Atlanta,” he wrote.
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