Stuff
July 31, 2007 at 12:43 pm by Wayne GarciaSorry, I’ve been light on posting. I’m filling in a bit around here for a vacationing colleague and that has eaten some of my time (and brain). Here’s some things from the past week or so that languished in my notebook, until now:
- The St. Petersburg Times has parted ways with one of our favorite local writers, Rick Gershman. The paper has been less forgiving with some staffers since it was reported a year ago that it is looking to cut some 90 positions companywide. The paper took the opportunity of Gershman’s recent detainment on DUI charges to hand him his notice.
- Rudy Giuliani’s campaign brain trust are pretty happy with their standing in Florida. Make that very happy. Only I don’t quite understand why.In a conference call held last week to announce the campaign’s Florida Steering Committee, strategy director Brent Seaborn said: “The Mayor’s held a pretty consistent lead in Florida throughout the year. We’ve led 18 of the 19 major polls conducted in Florida, typically we’ve got around a 10 point lead. Ballot strength is around 30 percent. We feel as though we have a very solid and stable base of support there.” And he’s accurate, as far as that goes. But a look at Giuliani’s trendlines in this state (and some of the other four early primary states as well) show that the Mayor has been trending down for a while now, likely the result of the meteoric rise of Fred Thompson (the “Rear Admiral” to my frequent readers, a nod to his role in Hunt for Red October). Only McCain has seen a bigger dropoff, while Romney edges slowly upward but remains far behind Giuliani. Seaborn called it “a very steady stable trendline we are working with in Florida.” For their sake, let’s hope their internal polling shows something different than the public ones.
- Speaking of Giuliani’s Florida Steering Committee, I was struck by the lack of well known Tampa Bay figures. The regional chairman will be Paul Scharff, who worked in President Bush’s and Charlie Crist’s campaigns and is capable. But Scharff is the former Manatee County GOP chairman with a lower profile in Tampa-St. Pete. The only Hillsborough-Pinellas resident on the list was Rich Glorioso, a Plant City state representative who will serve as communications co-chair for Giuliani in Florida. Not exactly a household name.
- And speaking of the Rear Admiral, he had a lackluster fundraising period, even though he is only in exploratory mode. Reports have put the figure at $3 million for June, below the campaign’s $5 million goal. Many writers pounced on this and said the bloom is of the rose for the man who once uttered, “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live through it.”
