An American Son: A Memoir (33 page)

I needed to tighten up our campaign operation and reduce our overhead. Our “burn rate” was too high, which is campaign speak for spending too much money. We needed a bare-bones operation that focused on two things: raising money, and getting me to events to raise money.

Finally, I had to land a few attention-getting endorsements. The one we wanted the most was the Club for Growth’s.

On Monday, July 20, I drove to our small campaign headquarters in Coral Gables for a meeting with my campaign manager, Brian Seitchik, to discuss the state of the campaign. Brian was a realist and had reached the same conclusion every other political professional had reached: I should run for attorney general. I wasn’t going to do that now, and I couldn’t have
a campaign manager who didn’t think I should be running. We parted ways on good terms.

Once Crist made it clear he might run for the Senate, some of the consultants who had offered to work for my campaign informed me that if Crist did run, they could only work for me if I ran for another office. They didn’t want to risk offending Crist or the NRSC. Fortunately, my media team, Heath Thompson; Todd Harris; and Heath’s future wife, Malorie Miller, promised to stay no matter what. They introduced to me to Pat Shortridge, a Minnesota-based conservative consultant, who joined the campaign full time in August. My press secretary, Alex Burgos, and Viviana Bovo were committed as well. And Ann Herberger, my finance consultant, agreed to continue working for us as a volunteer. Everyone who worked for my campaign did so at some risk to their own careers. Were I to lose the nomination, which seemed probable at the time, they might find future opportunities quite scarce.

Staff shake-ups are always difficult. They’re best handled quickly to minimize the damage. But before I could announce the changes, someone did it for me. I was in Pasco County the following Thursday for a speech when Alex Burgos called to tell me Adam Smith of the
St. Petersburg Times
had been tipped off about Brian’s and Ann’s departures, and wanted a comment. Neither Alex nor I wanted to lie to Adam. I had no choice but to confirm it.

“This isn’t a purge or anything—quite the contrary,” I told Smith. I tried to put a positive spin on what was an unpleasant necessity, but I was worried the news would be perceived as more evidence my campaign was going nowhere. I worried all night about the reaction. The theme of the story was exactly what I feared it would be.

I was certain that supporters who read it would begin abandoning the campaign. To my surprise, the news had almost no impact. I attended a Republican event in Tampa the next day and another in Ruskin the following day. No one brought it up.

The Crist campaign smelled blood, however, and circled in for the kill. On August 5, Al Cardenas endorsed Charlie Crist. I was caught completely off guard—Al hadn’t called to let me know what he was going to do. A week later, two key allies of mine in the legislature, Dean Cannon and Will Weatherford, endorsed Crist. Mario and Lincoln Diaz-Balart, both friends of mine and members of the U.S. House of Representatives, followed suit. None of the endorsements moved votes or made it any harder to raise money. They wanted the endorsements to demoralize me, and for a short time they did.

I set aside the last week of July for a family vacation on Captiva Island, Florida. We rented a vacation home there with Jeanette’s family. It would be the last opportunity to spend time with my family for quite a while, and even those few days were interrupted by campaign work. I had to leave Captiva for a day to fly to Washington, where I had a meeting scheduled with Bill Kristol of the
Weekly Standard
, as well as a fund-raiser and, if time permitted, a coffee with the editors of the
National Review
.

The coffee, which I’d barely been able to fit into my schedule, would turn out to have the most immediately beneficial impact on my campaign. I flew back to Florida the next day, and on the drive to Captiva, Pat Shortridge called to tell me the editors of the
National Review
were considering putting me on the cover of their next edition. But they wanted an assurance that I wasn’t going to switch races. I told Pat to give them the assurance.

I spent the next two days with my family, disconnected from the daily grind of the campaign. It was never far from my thoughts, though. It had been a very difficult month, but I was starting to see a glimmer of hope on the horizon. I had reorganized the campaign and reduced our overhead without paying a political price. Appearing on the cover of the
National Review
would give me a chance to nationalize my campaign—to turn it into a proxy fight for the national battle between conservatives and moderates for the soul of the GOP. If we could do that, we might be able to raise a million dollars before the end of the quarter.

Pat began setting up a direct-mail fund-raising program. It was something I knew very little about. I learned it would cost us more than it raised in the beginning. We would mail solicitation letters to proven donors on lists other Republicans had built over the years. Very few people would
send us any money, but those who did would become part of our own list. And because their donations were well below the maximum, we could go back to them for additional donations time and again throughout the campaign.

We hired Esther Nuhfer as our finance consultant. She had little experience raising money statewide, but that didn’t really matter. For the most part, the people who would host fund-raisers for me were new donors, many of whom had never before been involved in politics. If they had been, they might have thought twice about crossing a sitting governor. Our fund-raising got off to a slow start in August. It takes time to set up events, and it’s hard to schedule any in Florida in August, when many people vacation in a cooler climate. Most of our events that quarter were held after Labor Day.

I spent most of August doing the same things I had been doing all along: speaking to Republican clubs across the state and appearing on conservative radio talk shows. Pat ordered preprinted contribution envelopes, which I took to every speaking engagement. When I finished my remarks, I would make a pitch for donations, and volunteers would pass around the envelopes. Some folks took them home and mailed them to us later. But by the end of the month, more and more people were donating on the spot, and it wasn’t unusual to raise $2,000 at the events in $50 and $100 contributions.

I was committed to the Senate race, but that didn’t mean that temptation didn’t creep into my mind from time to time. In early August, Mel Martinez announced he would leave the Senate early. Someone suggested I ask Crist to appoint me to his seat for the remainder of his term with the understanding I wouldn’t run for a full term. I could use the appointment to position myself to run against Bill Nelson in 2012.

A week later, rumors circulated that Crist would appoint Lincoln Diaz-Balart to finish Mel’s unexpired term. Some friends suggested that if Lincoln was appointed, I could run in and easily win a special election to fill Lincoln’s vacant House seat. I discussed both ideas with Jeanette. She is my best adviser, especially when I’m tempted to do something I know in my heart I shouldn’t. She thought they were bad ideas, and after talking with her, I agreed.

Those distractions aside, I remained focused on the clear goal we had
set for the campaign. Get the campaign organized and raise a million dollars, and I would live to fight another day. If I failed to do that, I would be finished, quite probably finished for good in politics.

I had a follow up interview with the editors at the
National Review
scheduled for August 11. If all went well, I would be on the cover of the magazine scheduled for release on August 20. We were laying the groundwork for a major fund-raiser in New York for late September. Dan Senor, who had worked in the Bush administration, had arranged a number of appointments for me with major New York donors on August 17; among them were Paul Singer, a well-known national donor, and Mark Gerson, a young entrepreneur. They both seemed interested in the campaign but had doubts about my viability. They wanted to know how I could plausibly pull off a major upset. An answer would come forty-eight hours later.

I was in Orlando when the
National Review
hit newsstands on a Thursday morning. On the cover was my photograph, taken as I stood at the podium in the Florida House when I was speaker. My arms are crossed, my gaze fixed, and printed across the center of the page in bold white letters, the headline “Yes, HE CAN.”

The story was as good as the cover. It read in part:

The story included several flattering quotes from Jeb Bush. “He’s got all the right tools,” Jeb said. “He’s charismatic and has the ‘right principles.’” It closed with this analysis:

The
National Review
’s argument for my viability lent third-party validation to our fund-raising efforts. It was the first of several major turning points in the race. Supporters who were trying to attract donors to our
cause now had a flattering article in a respected conservative publication to use to convince their friends to become involved. We used the article in a highly effective direct-mail piece that actually made money—something early prospecting mail rarely does.

A major test of our progress would be the quarterly Florida Republican Party meeting scheduled for the weekend of August 21. I was initially reluctant to go. Crist had handpicked the state party chairman, and although he was required to remain officially neutral in the primary, everyone knew he and the entire apparatus of the state party were doing whatever they could to support Crist’s campaign. I argued with staff that it would be a waste of time that would be better spent meeting with voters. In truth, I was worried about how I would be received. I thought party officials would create situations that would make Charlie look popular to the press at my expense. I was afraid to go.

Jeanette, on the other hand, encouraged me to go with the whole family. We should have a major presence there, she said. And we would bring plenty of copies of the
National Review
with us.

David Rivera suggested we host a hospitality suite on the first night. But since the state party was paying for the event that weekend, it had to approve any other events held at the hotel. It refused to let the hotel rent us a hospitality suite or cater any event I hosted. So we had Cuban coffee delivered from a restaurant outside the hotel to David’s room, and we hosted a Cuban coffee reception the first night. It was jam-packed. I signed more than two hundred copies of the
National Review
for guests who crowded David’s suite.

The next morning we had volunteers stationed outside the conference room where the party was holding its quarterly board meeting. They were supposed to give copies of the
National Review
to people as they entered. But there weren’t any magazines there for them to hand out. We had hired a young woman from Gainesville to help coordinate our grassroots campaign, and she was supposed to deliver the magazines that morning. Unbeknownst to us, she had been in contact with friends at the state party, and by extension with the Crist campaign. She had disappeared the night before during the coffee reception, and no one could find her. When she failed to report for duty the next morning, we knew something was up. She came to my room later to tell me she was leaving the campaign. She had been
offered a job by the state party. Later that day, Adam Smith of the
St. Petersburg Times
reported another staffer had left my campaign. It was clearly an orchestrated effort by the Crist campaign to embarrass me.

Other than that one small incident, I thought the weekend had been a success. Many Republicans were still apprehensive about openly supporting me. But I had as many attendees wearing my lapel stickers as Crist had. I was well received everywhere I went that weekend. People seemed excited to see me. One of Charlie’s consultants told a reporter my campaign was already worthwhile after I got the cover of the
National Review
.

The end of August saw a slight uptick in our fund-raising. We were collecting more envelopes at my speeches. Some of our midsized events were raising as much as $20,000. The mail was starting to make money. The crown jewel of the quarter would be the fund-raiser in New York in late September, hosted by the Fanjul family, a Cuban American family that owns a large sugar and real estate conglomerate. It sounded unbelievable, but if the event hit its target, we stood a good chance of posting a million-dollar quarter.

My kids would often overhear me discussing our fund-raising with Jeanette. In late August, Amanda did something that nearly broke my heart. She had recruited her brothers and sister to help her collect loose change around the house. She added the allowance she had saved and money she had received as gifts to the coins she had found, and presented me with a twenty-three-dollar donation to my campaign. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.

The Fanjuls suggested I spend Labor Day weekend in the Hamptons, where many of their friends and major Republican donors would spend the holiday. Jeanette and I stayed in Mark Gerson’s guesthouse. On Sunday night, Pepe and Emilia Fanjul hosted a dinner for us on their boat, and they invited former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani. Rudy stayed for the entire dinner, and afterward we talked about my campaign. He wasn’t ready to endorse me yet, but he was intrigued. There was no love lost between Rudy and Charlie Crist.