A while ago, former U.S. Senator Bob Graham announced his support of Jim Davis in the Democratic primary for the shot to replace outgoing two term governor Jeb Bush. That alone was pretty big. Graham is probably the most popular politician in the state. He’s easily the most popular Democrat of the last 30 years and probably the second best retail politician we’ve produced in the last 50 years. This morning I saw a commercial that Graham has cut for Davis. Graham narrates the first half, is featured prominently with Davis while narrating and then talks directly into the camera. This is a really powerful ad and may just be what Davis needs to shore up the nomination.

Davis was once considered a shoe-in for the nomination. He was a strong enough candidate, on paper, that some other Democrats chose not to enter the race. State Senator Rod Smith quickly emerged as the not-Davis candidate and looked suprisingly strong. Polls showed the two of them in a neck and neck race with neither one beating Republican front runner Charlie Crist. Davis has started to pull away from Smith recently. He’s also pulling better against Crist. If Bob Graham is looking at Davis as the heir to his political machine and if he campaigns like that, Davis will end up winning this thing.

Sadly, I won’t live here to enjoy that. If Phil Angelides doesn’t get his act together, I may be leaving Florida just as the two term JEB! years are replaced by a Democrat in the governorship and moving to California just as Ahnold goes from being a political fluke to a two term governor of the largest state in the union.

More on the Republican race to succeed JEB! later.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 11:19 am and is filed under Florida Politics, blog, electoral politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.