Phil Brennan
Tuesday, June 5, 2001

This is the former Clinton administration attorney general whose truckload of negatives includes the slaughter at Waco, the gunpoint abduction of Elian Gonzalez, stonewalling FBI Director Louis Freeh and one of her top aides by refusing to investigate the activities of then-Vice President Al Gore, and countless other incidents where she ignored blatant wrongdoing by the Clinton administration.

This is the woman Senate Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, once called "the most partisan attorney general" in U.S. history.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was even more blunt: He said that Reno managed "probably the most disgraceful Justice Department since the Teapot Dome scandal of 1923 when the attorney general had to resign because of corruption."

And there were plenty of calls for her resignation from Capitol Hill, where members of both House and Senate went on record demanding that Reno step down.

Then there is her Parkinson's disease, a progressively worsening neurological disorder that may induce dementia.

Yet despite all these negatives, Florida Democrats are watering at the mouth over the prospect of a Reno run for Florida’s top office. And, they say, so is Reno.

``I think it's something she definitely wants to do,'' Hugh Westbrook, a Democrat fund-raiser, and close friend of the former attorney general, told the Miami Herald. Westbrook is encouraging her to make the run, the Herald reports.

``I would say she's moving in a more positive direction,'' he said, ``But this ultimately becomes a very personal decision that she has to make. I don't think you could say it's a given that she's running.

``She's talking to friends. She's talking to activist Democrats and trying to ascertain whether this is something that's doable for her,'' Westbrook said. ``It's no light matter to take on an incumbent governor. She understands that.''

No light matter indeed. A recent Herald poll showed Florida Gov. Jeb Bush beating Reno by a scant 6 points should the election be held now. But the election won’t be held now. It's more than a year away, and that’s plenty of time for the GOP to zero in on Reno’s vast number of negatives and chip away on any credibility she might have left after her eight-year stint covering up for the Clintons.

Then there are the Cuban exiles, still fuming over Reno’s role in having a terrified little Elian Gonzalez snatched at gunpoint and shipped back to Communist Cuba.

That famous photo of one of Reno’s armed thugs pointing an automatic weapon at Elian could be expected to be given wide exposure from day one in any Bush-Reno contest.

A Reno candidacy could be expected to inflame Dade County’s huge Cuban exile community, whose votes put Gov. Bush’s brother George W. over the top in Florida’s crucial presidential election and would undoubtedly do the same for Jeb Bush if Reno is the Democrat candidate.

But the Cubans aren’t Reno’s only dedicated foes in Florida. Up in the Panhandle, Reno’s role in the incineration of more than 80 victims at Waco remains a hot issue. Moreover, any Democrat candidate can expect a huge backlash from the western Panhandle, located in the Central time zone, where more than 10,000 voters lost their chance to cast votes for George W. Bush as a result of the premature network calls naming Al Gore the winner in Florida before the polls had even closed there.

It’s just about certain that those 10,000 voters can be added to the GOP column should Reno run. Ditto the absentee votes of some 1,400 members of the armed forces the Gore campaign managed to have thrown out in the 2000 election.

Speculation that Reno is at least testing the waters increased when she made an appearance at a gathering of Broward Council of Democratic Club Presidents, where she got an unsurprising enthusiastic response from this group of liberal Democrat activists.

``She's such a lightning rod, the whole thing will be about her and what she's done, or not done. She would polarize the state immediately,'' said Gary Ross of Port St. Joe, chairman of the Gulf County Republican Party, in the Panhandle.

Some Democrats feel the same way. ``Janet Reno? Janet Reno? You'd better find someone else to ask,'' an incredulous Carl Fox, a Democrat and a Gulf County commissioner, told the Herald. ``I think she's against guns, and anyone for gun control ain't for me.''

But Reno as a candidate would be no pushover. Democrats in the state are smarting over their loss in the presidential race. Like their national chairman, Terry McAuliffe, they continue to parrot the discredited line that President Bush stole the election despite all the evidence from impartial media-sponsored recounts that show that in reality Bush overcame an all-out Gore attempt to create votes out of thin air and dimpled chads.

The drumbeat of anti-Jeb Bush propaganda gets louder and louder as the campaign for the governorship begins to gather steam. Evidence that the Democrats are willing to stoop to the Sidney Blumenthal level of smear tactics in an effort to unseat Gov. Bush emerged with the spread of a totally false rumor that Jeb Bush was involved with a female state official.

Despite the failure of a full-court press by the media to find so much as a single scintilla of evidence to support the false allegation, at least one sleazy Democrat Web site continues to refer to the woman as "Jeb’s girlfriend.”

In any race in Florida, Republicans must overcome the huge Democrat margin that comes out of the condos of Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. In recent elections the GOP has been able to counterbalance that advantage, winning the governorship and control of both house of the state Legislature.

Given Reno’s handicaps, her candidacy could well give the GOP the big advantage it will need in next year’s gubernatorial election.

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