Permanent Evolution

On Drew Curtis' FARK.com the links to all the important and bizarre stories you'll need for your news diet are divided into categories, including "weird," "interesting," "unlikely," "asinine," "cool," and "Florida."

That's just how extreme we are. We have transcended geography and become an state of being. For perspective, the only other proper noun to earn a FARK category is "Walken."

Actually, we in Florida are not so vastly different from other states. We totally blew a world-changing presidential election in 2000, but that could have happened to anyone with butterfly ballots, hanging chads and a felon list as notorious as the FBI's Most Wanted. Florida also has concentrations of every single heavily-courted voting bloc in the country; the young vote, the old vote, the Hispanic vote, including Puerto Rican, Cuban and Mexican votes. And don't forget the African American, Jewish, Arab, Christian, suburban, gay and the-list-goes-on votes. We also have pre-election lawsuits, paperless electronic voting machines and population increase of 1.5 million since 2000.

Florida is a shape-shifter. Trying to get a bead on it is like being the lead character in Memento. Whatever you knew a minute ago, just forget it. Something else is happening now. And now. And now.

Florida put Republican Jeb Bush in the governor's mansion twice in since 1998, but go back a few decades and most of our governors have been Democrats. Bill Nelson and Bob Graham, both Democrats, occupy our Senate seats, but we put more Republicans in the U.S. House than Democrats this legislative session.

We wanted Poppy Bush for President in 1992, but were happy to give Bill Clinton a return engagement in 1996. We liked Ike and Nixon, and also Truman and Roosevelt. It's a fairly healthy tug of war.

So while the state teeters, one thing that remains solid is the conceded importance of the Interstate 4 Corridor, the swath of land that hangs like a pageant contestant's sash from the shoulder of the state to its hip. I-4 runs from Daytona, where NASCAR thrives, down to Tampa Bay.

What Will the Center Hold?

Right in the center of it all is Orlando, where Mickey, Goofy and I live. "Central Florida is conservative by it's very nature," says Bill Orben, editor of the Osceola News-Gazette, which reported 10,000 newly registered voters as of Oct. 8, mostly Democrats. "It's so close, one small splinter group could tilt it one way or the other."

Orlando's Orange County has a decidedly conservative vibe to it, as does neighboring Osceola County. Orlando elected Democrat Buddy Dyer in the last mayoral election, but before that it picked Republican Glenda Hood, who was later appointed by Jeb Bush to be secretary of state. Hood and Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections Thereasa LePore were recently the targets of a lawsuit over the lack of a paper trail in Florida's new touch screen voting machines. The suit was dismissed by a state appeals court. A federal judged also recently ruled that a paper trail was unneccessary.

Both Orange and neighboring Osceola went for Al Gore in 2000 by a total of roughly 8,000 votes, while neighboring Seminole County went for Bush by about twice that number. More Democrats may be registered here now, but according to an analysis by St. Petersburg Times political editor Adam Smith, the non-Cuban Hispanic vote (Orlando's biggest demographic increase in recent years) "partly explains why Orange County went Democratic in 2000 for the first time since World War II."

Other political pros point to different voting groups as crucial. "If women and minorities turn out the vote we will win solidly. If they don't, we won't," says Doug Head, chairman of the Orange County Democrats. Head predicts that Kerry will take Orange County by 15,000 votes this time, the increase largely being attributable to "new registrants to the state who are more progressive." Speaking of progressive, Karen Lopez, co-state organizer of the League of Pissed Off Voters in Florida says that her group has encountered in Orlando mostly "the hip hop, Latino club-going kids," In Tampa, however, Lopez says there's a "really strong crew of punk voters." But despite the optimism that these good numbers offer, everybody knows that nothing is sure.