A combination of negative ads and poll-driven speculation in the media ate away at Rick Scott's double-digit lead in the Republican gubernatorial campaign and almost cost him the election.
Scott's 3-point victory over Attorney General Bill McCollum was a far cry from polls that showed him leading by up to 16 points in July.
But the health-care executive also beat the expectations of several polls, including a Mason-Dixon survey that showed McCollum up by 8 points less than a week before Election Day.
Mainstream media outlets picked up those positive polls for McCollum and ran with them.
On election eve, a St. Petersburg Times headline crowed: "Florida Poised to Buck Anti-Establishment Revolt." The story was filled with speculation about Republican voters coming back to McCollum.
That same day, a Miami Herald blog claimed, "McCollum Predicts an 'Early Night,'" intimating that the attorney general would cruise to a convincing victory. In fact, McCollum said no such thing -- but it made for an enticing headline that fit the artificial narrative of a stunning "comeback."
So much for those predictions.
It's an axiom in politics that elections that look to be blowouts tend to tighten in the final days. Such was the case for Scott and McCollum.
In addition to the horserace aspect of campaign coverage -- in which newspapers, TV newscasts and websites seize on any elements to gin up a competitive contest -- the McCollum camp went into overdrive.
With financial backing from leading Republicans and nominally independent 527 funding organizations, McCollum ratcheted up his TV ads and negative attacks.
"They had Jeb Bush, Mike Huckabee, Michael Reagan, Rudy Giuliani and Haley Barbour. If the campaign had gone on another week, I have no doubt they would have dug up Ronald Reagan and done a voice over," said Robin Stublen, a Punta Gorda tea party activist.
Scott fought back with more negative ads of his own, hammering away at McCollum's reputed links to disgraced Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer. Scott also suggested that McCollum was unfairly sopping up party resources at the expense of other GOP candidates.
By then, voters may have had enough of the mudslinging. And some die-hard Republicans may have felt that Scott's sharp critique of the party was impugning their efforts.
"We may have seen some going with Mike McCalister as a protest vote against both (Scott and McCollum)," said Daniel Smith, a political science professor at the University of Florida.
McCalister, who ran a virtually invisible campaign and barely registered a pulse in the polls, finished with 10 percent of the vote Tuesday night.
Negative ads, which dominated the Scott-McCollum race, can hit a point of diminishing returns, said one Florida campaign consultant who asked not to be identified.
"You reach a saturation point on negatives -- for every percentage point you gain against your opponent, you lose a half-point," the consultant said.
After launching his campaign with positive ads, Scott quickly went negative after McCollum unleashed hard-hitting spots against him.
Much was made in the media of Scott's successful challenge to the state's public-financing law -- a court victory that denied taxpayer funds to McCollum's campaign. It proved to be a double loss for the attorney general, who tried to tout his conservative credentials but ended up looking like just another career politician feeding at the public trough.
In fact, however, McCollum benefited from other Florida campaign laws that opened a free-flowing spigot for funding from outside committees.
"(McCollum) was able to round up $20 million through 527s. Most states don't allow for that kind of coordination," said a South Florida campaign consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The consultant added that McCollum was caught flat-footed when Scott entered the race in April. "He never got into the game until it was too late."
But Scott made tactical mistakes, too. He didn't air any Spanish language TV spots until the very end of the campaign. That hurt him in Miami-Dade County, in which McCollum swamped him by a 52-38 margin.
Scott also tripped over a landmine in the stretch run.
"The big moment was the press conference on the Solantic deposition in Tallahassee," Professor Smith said. "It unnerved him and took him off message for a week. His negatives started to go up."
But even that uncomfortable moment -- as with another confrontation involving a heckler in West Palm Beach -- may have rebounded to Scott's benefit as it raised questions about the origin and validity of the last-minute charges against Scott.
Everett Wilkinson, the West Palm heckler who also had harassed Scott about the Solantic clinics while Scott was speaking on another subject, was a McCollum supporter who accompanied the attorney general at the time McCollum filed his candidacy papers.
At every turn, Scott tried to deflect criticism and dismiss his critics as tools of the Republican Party machine. Right or wrong, this burnished his credentials as an outsider taking on special interests.
But Wilkinson, whose heckling was captured on video by Sunshine State News, maintains that unanswered questions will dog Scott in the general election.
"You won't see me with Rick Scott to get out the vote until we have those questions answered," Wilkinson said Wednesday.
Though Wilkinson is executive director of the South Florida Tea Party, other tea groups consider him politically compromised and are keeping their distance.
Ultimately, Scott's broad, grass-roots support outweighed the GOP machinery arrayed behind McCollum.
"Scott is very much in touch with the tea party movement," said Tom Tillison, a Central Florida Tea Party activist. Tillison said a consortium of tea party groups may formally endorse Scott this month.
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
