UF Researcher: Republican Party At Highest Point Since Reconstruction

March 1, 1999

GAINESVILLE — A remade Republican Party is filling the political vacuum left by Democrats and is in a position to govern Florida for at least a generation, says a University of Florida researcher and expert on state government.

“Jeb Bush has enormous opportunities to lead that no Republican has ever had in Florida history,” said David Colburn, a UF history professor and author of the new book “Government in the Sunshine State.” The book is coauthored by Lance deHaven-Smith, a professor of public administration at Florida State University.

After dominating the state for nearly three decades with progressive leaders such as Bob Graham, Lawton Chiles and Reuben Askew, the Democrats have failed to cultivate new talent or communicate well within the ranks, Colburn said. “There are Democratic members of the state Senate, the state House of Representatives and the Cabinet who have never heard from a party official,” he said.

The fact that Bush is governor of the fourth-largest state and his brother George governs Texas, the second-largest state, and may be the Republican presidential nominee also bodes well for the party at the national level, despite the recent presidential impeachment controversy, he said.

In Florida, the party is well-positioned for the 21st century because it has many talented young leaders waiting to be the next governor or secretary of state, not to mention multiple candidates for Congress, Colburn said. These rising stars include Orlando Mayor Glenda Hood, Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney, Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan and Secretary of State Katherine Harris.

“It’s been called the party of white men,” Colburn said, “but actually if you look at the Republican Party in the state of Florida it has a lot of women and Hispanics who are, if not in the first-ranked positions, in the second-tier positions.”

Bush now is reaching out to blacks, and if he is successful, it would seal the fate of the Democratic Party, he said.

Another reason the Republican Party will be extraordinarily strong is that Bush will preside over the redistricting resulting from the 2000 census, Colburn said. In reapportionment, the political party in power can establish the boundaries of voting districts in a way that gives their party tremendous advantage in future elections, he said.

Having a Republican govern the fourth-largest state during the next redistricting also will add to the party’s clout at the national level because Florida will gain seats in the House of Representatives, Colburn said.

One problem facing Bush and future leaders is finding support for programs in a rapidly growing state with rootless people, he said. For example, many of Florida’s senior citizens — a population larger than that of some states — continue to see themselves as residents of somewhere else, making them less likely to favor funding programs here, he said.

“Bob Graham called it the Cincinnati Factor,’” Colburn said. “They’re from Cincinnati, they still subscribe to a Cincinnati newspaper, they go back to Cincinnati once a year to visit family and friends and they ship their remains back to Cincinnati when they die. Their only connection to Florida is that they live here during their senior years.”

The state’s regionalism adds to the sense of disconnection, said Colburn. Residents from the northeastern United States are most likely to settle on Florida’s southeast coast and those from the Midwest on the southwest coast, while north Floridians most often had relatives coming from Georgia, Alabama and other Southern states, he said.

“You’ve got people like my barber who say that Miami is not a part of Florida, it’s a foreign country,” he said.

Florida’s Southernness is really a thing of the past, with its size, diversity and large number of senior citizens making it very much a bellwether state, Colburn said. “One of the biggest challenges for the state and its leaders will be to take this diverse population and create a sense of being a Floridian out of it,” he said, “to make unum out of the pluribus.”