Reno, the Popular Target

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. —  So many members of the Century Village Democratic Club here turned out to see Janet Reno last week that the organizers had to scramble to find more chairs just as she began speaking.

“We’ve never run out of chairs before,” marveled Sam Oser, the genial vice president of the Democratic club at the sprawling retirement community.

The overflow crowd of seniors was another milestone in Reno’s unlikely evolution from Bill Clinton’s lightning-rod attorney general into the potential front-runner for the Democratic nomination to oppose Florida Gov. Jeb Bush next year.

Early polls give Reno--who says she’ll make a final decision on whether to run in September--a commanding lead over a large field of Democrats considering the race. Yet, as much enthusiasm as Reno inspires among Democratic activists, surveys suggest she incites an equal amount of antagonism among Republicans.

The quiet but pervasive fear in Democratic circles is that Reno may be impossible to beat in the primary election and unable to win the general election. “She stands fairly strong in the Democratic primary,” said Mitch Caesar, the party chairman in populous Broward County, a Democratic stronghold. “But the very things that make people strong in a primary can make them weaker in a general.”

Nervous about squandering the opportunity against Jeb Bush--a prime Democratic target after his role in last year’s bitterly disputed presidential vote here--many party insiders are trying to unite around a more moderate choice, particularly former U.S. Rep. Douglas “Pete” Peterson, who until recently was ambassador to Vietnam.

But Reno’s rapturous reception at Century Village--and an equally enthusiastic response from a group of young professionals later that day in Fort Lauderdale--suggests that she’ll be extremely difficult to beat if she runs. “If you just look at the primary, I don’t see any Democrat being able to challenge her,” said Jim Kane, director of the independent Florida Voter Poll. As many as half a dozen other Democrats are considering the race against Bush, who was first elected in 1998 after losing narrowly to the late Lawton Chiles in 1994.

Among those also heading toward the September 2002 primary are Lois Frankel, who became a familiar face as the Democratic leader in the Florida House of Representatives during the recount imbroglio; state Sen. Daryl Jones; prominent attorney Bill McBride; U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, a moderate from Tampa; and Peterson, a former prisoner of war whom many party insiders consider the strongest potential general election candidate. Peterson, who returned to the state last month after his stint as ambassador, has been meeting privately with party leaders and said he plans to announce his decision on whether to run this fall.

“I have in fact been encouraged by the comments I’ve had and the submissions of support I’ve had from various people . . . to move ahead with this,” Peterson said.

Yet Reno unquestionably looms as the largest figure in this field. She approaches the race with several advantages. For starters, she’s far better known than any of the other possible candidates: A recent Mason-Dixon Florida Poll found that an incredible 98% of state Democrats recognized her name. None of her potential rivals were recognized by more than 45% of possible primary voters. That’s an especially valuable asset in a sprawling state like Florida, where the cost of gaining exposure through television ads is prohibitive.

Reno’s service with President Clinton gives her an attractive calling card with core Democratic constituencies, such as African Americans. And her status as the nation’s first female attorney general makes her an appealing symbol to many women, especially those likely to vote in a Democratic primary. (Even before she said a word, the young professional women in her audience in Fort Lauderdale last week erupted in loud applause when she was introduced as the first woman to hold that job.)

Her stump speech is very much a work in progress; Reno emphasizes traditional Democratic priorities such as education, environmental protection and early childhood intervention, though without many specifics. But what Reno says appears less important than how she says it. Her admirers describe her with the same terms that supporters last year used to describe presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.): incorruptible, immune to political calculations and incapable of spin.

“I said to her, ‘You have to run because you are our only hope,’ ” Marion Russ of Century Village said after Reno’s speech. “I don’t think she’ll mince words, and that’s what we need more of.”

Adding to her strengths is her geographic base in Miami: 40% of the Democratic primary vote is cast in the big three southeastern Florida counties (Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach), where she has the deepest roots, noted Kane. In all, early polls give her leads of as much as 4 to 1 over her closest competitors (Peterson and Davis) in the primary.

A change in the Florida election law for next year compounds all of these advantages. As part of the election law reforms passed last spring, the state Legislature eliminated a runoff provision that required the two top finishers to meet in a second contest if no one received a majority of the vote in the initial primary. (Part of the reason was that the second primary was completed so close to the election that it delayed the mailing of absentee ballots, which legislators felt contributed to the confusion over late-arriving overseas military votes last fall.)

The sense among Democratic insiders is that one of the more centrist candidates, such as Davis or Peterson, might have an opportunity to coalesce the party’s more moderate elements against Reno if they could face her one-on-one in a runoff. But in a crowded primary, where support is splintered, Reno’s geographic base and huge lead in name identification would make her doubly difficult to beat.

Yet for all of these strengths in a primary, Reno’s position in a general election against Bush looks much more uncertain. She’s hardly a candidate any media consultant would construct. At 63, she’s only run for and held one elected office: the state’s attorney position in Miami-Dade County. Though she flashes an effectively deadpan sense of humor, the most emotion she displays behind the podium is the occasional arch of an eyebrow. Reno suffers from Parkinson’s disease, and though her doctors have cleared her to serve, her hand visibly shakes as she speaks, which may make some voters uncertain about her vigor.

The association with Clinton that attracts Democratic activists is a red flag for conservatives; indeed, in the Mason-Dixon survey, her negative rating among registered voters stood at 37%, higher than both her positive rating and Jeb Bush’s negative rating. And she’s been vilified in the Cuban American community for her decision last year requiring Elian Gonzalez, the young Cuban boy, to return to the island nation with his father.

Even Republicans have been impressed by her willingness to confront the anger over Elian, including interviews on Cuban American radio stations. At Century Village, she portrayed the dispute as proof of her ability to make the difficult calls a governor might confront: “I think what the people want are [officials] who are willing to make tough decisions and get them carried out and be accountable for them. And I am accountable in every way I can be for the decisions in the Elian Gonzalez case.”

Though she may score points for candor, the fear in Democratic circles is she’ll provoke an intense turnout among the GOP base, including Cuban Americans, that will offset the expected outpouring among core Democrats against Bush. Privately, some Democrats think that, since their own voters are already motivated by the presidential election debacle to turn out against Bush, the party would be better served by a blander nominee, such as Davis or Peterson, who doesn’t rattle Republicans.

Former state GOP Chairman Tom Slade agreed that could be a tougher scenario for Bush. “If you take Reno out of the race, it is almost going to be Jeb against Jeb, because none of these other folks create any negative excitement. I would much prefer Reno to be our opponent.”

In an interview, Reno said she will not run unless she believes she can win not only the nomination but the general election. But she quickly added that she doesn’t consider today’s polls giving Bush about a 15-percentage-point advantage against her as the final word on whether she could beat him. “There’s got to be a campaign and a debate on the issues,” she said.

Reno said she’s still doing nothing more than exploring her options as she tours the state in a red Ford pickup, meeting with Democratic activists and presenting herself to civic groups. But she sounds like someone itching to start that campaign and launch that debate.