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Katherine Harris

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Katherine Harris

Katherine Harris (born April 5, 1957) is an American politician from the U.S. state of Florida.

A Republican, Harris is a two-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Florida's 13th congressional district (map). She took office in January 2003 after winning in the 2002 House elections. Prior to her service in the House, Harris was the Secretary of State of Florida and played a leading role in the closely contested 2000 U.S. presidential election.

On June 7, 2005, Harris announced her candidacy for the United States Senate as a Republican, challenging incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. Harris' fund raising has lagged behind Nelson's. [1]. In 2005, Harris' campaign accepted contributions from defense contractor Mitchell Wade. Later a US Attorney found Wade illegally bundled contributions but Harris did not appear to know the funds were gathered improperly.[[2]] In March 2006 many of her staff resigned, including Ed Rollins. In response to widespread speculation that she may quit the race, Harris pledged to continue the campaign with $10 million of her own funds.

Early life

Harris was born in Key West, Florida. Her grandfather was Ben Hill Griffin, Jr., a businessman who made a fortune in the cattle and citrus industries and served in the state house and senate. The Ben Hill Griffin Stadium at the University of Florida is named for him.[3] [4]

Education

Harris graduated from Bartow High School in Bartow, Florida and attended Spain's University of Madrid, before receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia in 1979. In 1980 she attended L'Abri (outside Geneva, Switzerland) on a L'Abri International Fellowship.

Harris received her masters degree in public administration from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government in 1997 with a major in international trade.

Business career and service in the Florida Senate

Before entering politics, Harris was vice president of a commercial real estate firm; another previous job was as a marketing executive at IBM [5].

Early political career

Harris entered politics by winning election to the Florida Senate in 1994, in one of the most expensive state races in Florida history at that time. [6]

Florida Senate & Riscorp

In the 1994 state senate election, Sarasota-based Riscorp, Inc., made illegal contributions totalling $400,000, to dozens of political candidates and committees [7], including $20,600 to the Harris campaign. [8]. Two years later, in 1996, Harris sponsored a bill "to block Riscorp competitors from getting a greater share of Florida workers' compensation market, [and] also pushed a proposal that would hurt a particular competitor." [9]. This issue later emerged during her campaign for Florida Secretary of State in 1998. Regarding this issue, according to a SunHerald column from June, 2005 "Harris denied any knowledge of the scheme, was never charged with any crime and was cleared of wrongdoing by a state investigator." [10]

Secretary of State

Harris was was elected Secretary of State for Florida in 1998, defeating then-incumbent Sandra Mortham.[11].

International travel

During her first 22 months in office, Harris spent more than $106,000 for travel, more than any cabinet officer or the governor. She visited eight countries on ten foreign trips, staying at hotels.

In early 2001, Florida Senate leaders eliminated the $3.4-million that Harris had budgeted for international relations for the year, assigning it instead to Enterprise Florida, the state's economic development agency. But Florida House leader Tom Feeney (R-FL) said that he disagreed with the Senate and felt Harris was an able advocate to foreign countries. After the House refused to go along with the proposed budget action, the Senate agreed to restore the money but insisted on on a review committee, appointed by Senate President John McKay, Feeney, and governor Jeb Bush, to evaluate all of Harris's expenditures on international affairs since July 1, 1999, and produce a report. [12].

2000 Presidential election

Main article: [[:Florida Central Voter File and Florida election recount]]

As Secretary of State for the State of Florida, Harris presided over the contested 2000 presidential election in Florida. There were allegations of conflicts of interest and partisan, unethical behavior in Katherine Harris's actions during the 2000 campaign. Among Democrats, a factor which rankled was the fact that Harris had been named as Bush's Florida campaign co-chair the year before. Bob Butterworth, the Florida state's Attorney General served as co-chair of Gore's campaign. A number of other elected officials of both parties actively campaigned for their respective national candidates.

After the 1998 Mayoral election was overturned because votes had been cast by the convicted and the dead, election officials hired Database Technologies Inc. (DBT) of Boca Raton to help with the daunting task of scanning the state's massive database of registered voters for felons and dead people who are prohibited from voting by state law. [13] By the election, DBT had created a list of 57,700 convicted felons that Harris would purge from the voter rolls. The felon "scrub lists" allegedly removed 8,000 registered voters and some private investigators have claimed the number is as high as 55,000,[14] but Choicepoint (the company that has since aquired DBT says those numbers are "simply wrong". Choicepoint asserts that many who claimed to have been "scrubbed" had attempted to vote at precincts in which they were not registered.[15]

Those removed from the voting rolls included people convicted only of misdemeanors and those who had the same names and birthdays as the felons. On Election Day 2000, some persons, including those claiming to have been erroneously listed as felons, were reported to have been turned away from the polls. The use of felon "scrub lists" was strongly criticized as an attempt to disenfranchise poor and African-American voters in particular.[16][17] Some states permit even felons to vote after they have served their time. Others require a civil pardon.

Harris certified that the Republican candidate, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush, had defeated the Democratic candidate, Vice-President Al Gore, in the popular vote of Florida and thus certified the Republican slate of electors. Her ruling was challenged, and overturned on appeal by Florida's Supreme Court. This decision, however, was itself reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Bush v. Gore. That Court ruled (5-4) that Gore's request to extend Florida's statutory deadline for ballot re-counts had no merit, because no Florida law at the time provided for that option. This ruling nullified the state court's decision, upholding Harris' certification. Because the statutory vote-counting deadline expired weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling, Gore had effectively run out of time to legally challenge Florida's official results. The decision foreclosed any further court challenges by Gore and resulted in Bush's margin of victory in Florida being officially tallied at 537 votes. When this became official, Florida's electoral votes -- and the Presidency -- went to George W. Bush.

Harris later wrote Center of the Storm, her own memoir of the 2000 election controversy, in which she presents an account supportive of her decisions and takes issue with her more strident critics.

Attire and appearance

Harris has frequently been the subject of jokes on her makeup, "down home" attire, and allegedly air-brushed photographs. On The Tonight Show, Jay Leno said that "they had trucks in Florida bringing the ballots to Tallahassee... It's the same trucks they used to bring the makeup to Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris."[18] During the 2000-2001 season of Saturday Night Live, comedian Ana Gasteyer did an impression of Harris.[[19]

In January 2005, Harris told the Associated Press that "the jokes about my appearance–it's the computer-enhanced photos...It was like in a comic strip. They actually had blue eye shadow on front pages of newspapers and I haven't had blue eye shadow since Girl Scouts in seventh grade." On August 1, 2005, Harris was a guest on Sean Hannity's talk radio program on ABC Radio. Hannity asked Harris whether the jokes bothered her, and Harris told him that "I'm actually very sensitive about those things, and it's personally painful...You know, whenever they made fun of my makeup, it was because the newspapers colorized my photograph." Neither Harris nor her staff, however, ever produced altered photographs. [20]

2002 and 2004 races

In 2002, Harris ran against Sarasota Attorney Jan Schneider for the congressional district vacated by retiring Republican Rep. Dan Miller, winning by 10 percentage points in this predominantly Republican-leaning district.

Harris considered running for the seat of retiring Senator Bob Graham in 2004, but was reportedly dissuaded by the Bush White House to allow Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Mel Martinez to run for the open seat. Martinez went on to narrowly beat challenger Betty Castor. Harris ran for re-election to her House seat; she was re-elected with a margin similar to that of 2002.

In a 2004 speech in Venice, Florida, Harris claimed that a "Middle Eastern" man was arrested for attempting to blow up the power grid in Carmel, Indiana [21]; "Carmel Mayor James Brainard and a spokesman for Indiana Gov. Joe Kernan said they had no knowledge of such a plot. Brainard said he had never spoken to Harris." [22][23]

During a 2004 campaign stop in Sarasota, Florida, a local resident, Barry Seltzer, attempted to run his silver Cadillac over Harris and her supporters. Nobody was injured in the incident. Seltzer, who claimed he was "exercising [his] political expression," was eventually arrested and charged with assault with a deadly weapon.[24]

Controversy from the MZM Scandal

In 2005 and 2006, Harris faced political controversy when a major corporate campaign donor, defense contractor MZM, Inc., was implicated in a bribery scandal that resulted in the criminal conviction and resignation of California congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham and conviction of MZM founder, Mitchell Wade. Wade bundled together contributions from employees of MZM, and reimbursed those employees for their contributions. [25].

Regarding this issue, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Wainstein has recently said that Harris did not appear to know the donations were obtained illegally. [26] Harris has maintained she had no personal knowledge that her campaign was given illegal contributions. For its part, Wade admitted that the donations to the Harris campaign were illegal and were part of an attempt to influence Harris to MZM's benefit. [27].

Documents filed with Wade's plea say that he took Harris to dinner early in 2005, where they discussed the possibility of another fundraiser and the possibility of getting funding for a Navy counterintelligence program in the member's district. [28].

In an interview with the Orlando Sentinel Republican strategist (and former Harris staffer) Ed Rollins stated that Wade had paid for the meal. The Sentinel reported that this meal "may have cost as much as $2,800". [29]. Regarding the MZM contributions, the Sentinel article goes on to say "The Justice Department has said Wade, who personally handed many of the checks to Harris, did not tell Harris the contributions were illegal". And regarding the expensive meal, quotes Harris as saying that she personally had only a "beverage and appetizer" worth less than "$100". House rules prohibit accepting any gift worth $50 or more.

After meeting with Wade, Harris later sent a letter on April 26, 2005, to defense appropriations subcommittee Chairman C.W. Bill Young, in which Harris sought $10 million for a Navy project backed by Wade. [30]. In the letter, Harris emphasized the importance of the project, asking that it be added to her list of five priorities and identifying it as her new No. 3. (Harris has released the April 26 letter, but neither she nor Young would turn over the request form used for the proposal.) [31]

Mona Tate Yost, an aide to Harris, left to work for MZM during the time Wade was pressing Harris to secure federal funding (April or May of 2005). [32]

2006 Senate Race

Main article: Florida United States Senate election, 2006

2005 preliminaries

On June 7, 2005, Harris announced her candidacy for the United States Senate as a Republican, challenging incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson. Harris' fund raising has lagged behind Nelson's and her campaign has been troubled by controversy over campaign contributions by Mitchell Wade. In March 2006 many of her top staff resigned, including top GOP strategist Ed Rollins leading to intense media speculation that she was abandoning the race. However, she announced a new staff would be installed and that the campaign would continue and that she would commit her own private wealth, estimated by some at more than $10 million.

Despite Harris' support of many Republican causes and her previous statewide victories, some party leaders such as Governor Jeb Bush and Karl Rove have expressed doubts about her statewide appeal. They attempted to recruit the Speaker of Florida's state house of representatives Allan Bense into the race [33]. In early August 2005, Bense declined to challenge Harris, saying the timing was not right. Others mentioned were Representative Mark Foley, and talk-show host and former Representative Joe Scarborough. Neither have declared any intent to run.

Opinions and surveys

For her role in the 2000 election, "Harris is remembered by some as either hero or villain. The fact that she co-chaired President Bush's 2000 election campaign in Florida made her a ripe target for Democrats. Fellow Republicans, on the other hand, rewarded her contributions with a congressional victory in 2002." [34]

In a survey of voters taken August 23-29, 2005, Nelson garnered 57 percent to Harris's 33 percent.[35] A poll taken by Rasmussen on February 14, 2006 put Nelson under the important 50% mark, and showed Harris closing Nelson's lead to a more manageable 9 percentage points.[36]. A poll done by Quinnipiac University from Feb. 15-20 tells a different story. Out of 1,076 polled — 429 of them registered Democrat and 443 registered Republican — 53 percent would vote for Nelson if the election were held during that time. Harris received 31 percent of the vote, down from 38 percent in June. [37]

Subsequent polls have shown Nelson heavily expanding his lead over Harris. As of April 14, 2006, the latest Rasmussen poll shows Nelson leading Harris by a more than 2-1 margin of 57%-27%.[38]. Quinnipiac's April 20, 2006 poll results are similar at 56%-27%.[39]

February-April 2006 developments

In late February 2006, Harris' campaign finance director and campaign treasurer both resigned. [40].

On March 15, 2006 edition of Fox News Channels' Hannity & Colmes political debate show, Harris pledged to spend ten million of her own dollars on the campaign, which she has said is all of her inheritance. She has also stated her run is dedicated to the memory of her father. She has accused Nelson (the current Senator) of posing as a moderate while being "beholden to the far-left political side" [41], and has said she wants to bring integrity and ethics back to government.

On April 1, 2006 her top campaign advisor, pollster and campaign manager all resigned with a half dozen other staffers. Harris is promising to hire new ones. Republican pollster and consultant David Johnson said, "I've never seen staffers go like this. It's just imploding." However, other observers note that Harris has been abandoned by the party establishmenet and its consultants before and always managed to adjust and win races for state senate, secretary of state and Congress. Few, other than her ardent detractors, are willing to count her out this time in view of her penchant for making unexpected comebacks [42][43]

In early April, 2006, Harris told the Tampa Tribune that her campaign staffers and the national Republican party were deliberately sabotaging her campaign, "putting knives in her back" and had warned her that if she did not back out of the campaign she would get an "April surprise".[44] Former campaign staffer Ed Rollins said "They were all good professionals...There was no backstabbing. It's insulting that she would even say that. If she wants to know what went wrong with the campaign, maybe she needs to take a good look in the mirror."[45]

Sexuality criticism

Some feminist activists have derided Harris for apparently trying to highlight her feminine attributes in campaign appearances. In particular, some panned an appearance on Hannity & Colmes in which Harris stood in profile for the entire interview (being shown from the waist up) as an attempt to feature her breasts as prominently as possible.

The Daily Show recently satirized Harris regarding her bosom. Daily Show "reporter" Jason Jones cited the Hannity & Colmes interview and referred to her attire at a rodeo campaign stop as "tit-hugging spandex", along with other sexually themed comments about Harris.[46]. Harris supporters have rejoined that similar remarks about a Democratic candidate's sexual appearance would have provoked a media firestorm of allegations of "gender insensitivity" and "anti-woman" bias.

Political columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin recently rebuked Harris's sexuality critics, charging them with "liberal sexism."[47]. However, some conservatives have also criticized Harris for her choice of tight clothing in campaign appearances.[48]

Other points

Harris was a headlined speaker at the 'Reclaim America for Christ Conference 2006'. The stated mission of the group is to 'come together to reclaim this land for Christ.' [49]

Policy Positions

  • In a vote on May 24, 2005 [50], Harris voted with the minority (238 yea, 194 nay), in opposition to H.R. 810 [51], which would lift Bush's 2001 restrictions on federal funding for new embryonic stem cell research. She has generally supported the president throughout her tenure. [52]
  • Harris has co-sponsored legislation providing for liberal treatment of undocumented foreign workers and expansion of the H2-A Guest Worker visa program, which some have condemned as "amnesty". [53]

Notes

  1. ^ Becker, Jo, and Dana Milbank. "Controversy swirls around Harris." Washington Post. November 14, 2000.
  2. ^ Ibid.
  3. ^ Rado, Diane. " Harris backed bill aiding Riscorp." St. Petersburg Times. August 25, 1998. [54]
  4. ^ "Mid-career Master in Public Administration." John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. 2005.[55]
  5. ^ Tapper, Jake. "The woman under fire." Salon. November 13, 2000.[56]
  6. ^ Bousquet, Steve. "New voter rolls arouse more fears." St. Petersburg Times. December 2, 2001.[57]
  7. ^ Palast, Greg. "The great Florida ex-con game: How the 'felon' voter-purge was itself felonious." Harper's Magazine. March 1, 2002. [58]
  8. ^ "Harris: Papers doctored makeup in photos." Associated Press. August 4, 2005. [59]
  9. ^ Ibid.
  10. ^ http://www.reclaimamerica.org/PAGES/CONFERENCES/RAC2006/default.asp
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