Huge problem for Florida Team Democrat looking toward the 2012 elections: There's no sign of a miracle likely to come dancing out of the locker room later this week.
What state Dems have now is a squad of 125-pound linebackers with the bench strength of the 1976 Tampa Bay Bucs, no viable game plan and a shrinking donor list propped up mostly by labor unions and trial lawyers.
It will be interesting to see what transpires to change any of that during the 2011 Florida Democratic Party Convention Oct. 28-30 at Walt Disney World.
Beneath the layer of national names such as Vice President Joe Biden and former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, the convention will struggle to find a running game for most open seats in Florida, especially in the state House and Senate.
Where is the excitement going to come from?
*** From Nan Rich? Doubtful. The state Senate minority leader from Weston may have caused the biggest stir since Sept. 1, but she did it by announcing she might challenge Gov. Rick Scott in 2014. Nobody cares much about 2014 this week. Her impact on 2012 candidates will be negligible.
Right now Rich is busy establishing her Dem bonafides by resurrecting -- for the umpteenth time -- the Equal Rights Amendment. It got nowhere last year, it will go nowhere this year and it will do nothing to inject new life into the party.
*** From Alex Sink? Again, doubtful. Sink snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in 2010. Besides, like Nan Rich, she wants to be governor. Her main concern at the 2012 convention is to stay out front as party leader, bide her time until 2014.
Consider that Sink won all six of the state's most populated counties: Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Pinellas, Hillsborough and Orange. The last Democrat to pull that off was Lawton Chiles in 1990. But unlike Chiles, Sink lost her election. The fact is, the voter makeup of Florida counties has changed dramatically from Chiles' day. There just weren't enough Democrats in the rural counties to help pull Sink's vote count up.
Florida Dems have no rich guys like Jeff Greene waiting in the wings to run this time; they have few, if any, legislators looking to move up.
Democrats predicted two years ago that their next wave of new blood would come from the ranks of urban mayors. Perhaps those big-city leaders will emerge this week. Certainly Mayors Bob Buckhorn, Buddy Dyer, Craig Lowe, Jack Seiler, John Marks and Cindy Lerner are all signed up as Party Chairman Rod Smith's "special guests."
But Dems keep missing the trends. They pay more attention to mainstream media's coverage of numbers than the numbers themselves: big excitement for 200 Occupy Tallahassee protesters -- mostly college students showing up to support opposition to Wall Street greed; virtually none for the near-6,000 supporters of a tax credit scholarship at the Capitol.
Florida, like the whole of America, has changed. Talk to Democratic strategists on the national level. They will tell you the Dems' best opportunities in 2012 center on states and congressional districts populated by Hispanics, African-Americans, upscale white liberals, suburban voters and the young. In a nutshell, the nation's urban centers. They are the seat of the liberal stronghold now.
Democrats, it seems, are watching the wrong signs going into the 2012 elections: Even if urban and upscale suburban voters care more about womens and environmental issues and gay rights, and are willing to pay higher taxes than more rural, downscale voters, its far from clear that urbanites will show the lust to vote Democrat they did in 2010 or 2008. Like rural voters, they too may punish the president for the economy.
If the Florida Democratic Party has a "Hail Mary" pass other than Charlie-Crist-in-2014 up its sleeve, it's not too early to let it fly this week in Lake Buena Vista.
This is an opinion column: Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at (850) 727-0859.
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