Gentle Jeb.

Whatever's going on in Texas, Florida has a Bush who shows what 'compassionate conservative' means.

'WHO would have thought that in Alachua County this many people would come out for the Republican candidate for governor?" The question, asked by the candidate himself, had an easy answer: no one. Both the Weather Channel (Hurricane Georges was making his way up Florida's Gulf Coast) and local history suggested a small turnout for Jeb Bush's campaign barbecue. Democrats outnumber Republicans 2 to 1 in this northern county. Voters here picked Bill Clinton over Jeb's dad by a whopping 20 percentage points, and they chose Lawton Chiles over Jeb himself in the 1994 governor's race by an even larger margin.

But this day, more than two thousand people showed up, the largest crowd in living memory for a Republican in the area, and more than ten times the number his opponent, Buddy MacKay, has drawn here this year. "This is what it's all about," said Bush, "throwing conventions aside."

Four years ago Bush ran as a self-described "head-banging conservative," calling for the abolition of the Department of Education and proposing that all tax increases be submitted to a popular referendum. He still considers himself a conservative, but this time his tune is more Hootie than heavy metal. He's campaigning hard in black churches, poor neighborhoods, and public schools-not to mention Democratic strongholds like Alachua County-and his speeches combine appeals for less government with vows to fight urban poverty and child abuse. He's racking up endorsements from Democratic officials and black leaders, in the process making MacKay, a thirty-year veteran of Florida politics, look like a novice. And at a time when complacency has leeched the life out of the state's Democratic establishment, Bush threatens to boot it out of Tallahassee altogether.

Bush's political moment has been four years in the making. After a bruising primary in 1994, he faced incumbent Gov. Lawton Chiles, a giant of Florida politics who has been in elected office since 1958. Chiles beat him by less than 64,000 votes, the closest gubernatorial election in state history. The strong showing instantly pegged Bush as the front-runner for 1998-even before it was revealed that Chiles-MacKay campaign workers, pretending to be from senior-citizen and tax-watchdog groups, had made more than 70,000 phone calls to voters in the final weeks of the race, warning falsely that Bush planned to "abolish Social Security." "A lot of people felt that Jeb Bush was actually elected but for a minor technicality," says University of Florida political scientist Richard Scher, "and since then he's acted as if he's the rightful heir."

In 1994, Bush advocated requiring state prisoners to serve at least 85 per cent of their sentences before being eligible for parole (at the time the average was just 37 per cent), and in 1995 he worked with Republican legislators to get a law to this effect passed. When the state unemployment-compensation fund ran a surplus, the legislature adopted his proposal to give businesses a refund, to the tune of $162 million. Bush traveled around the state promoting charter-school legislation, and in 1996 he joined with T. Willard Fair, president of the Urban League of Greater Miami, to found Florida's first charter school in one of Dade County's toughest neighborhoods. The contrast with the listless Chiles administration was such, says John Thrasher, the incoming Republican Speaker of the Florida House, that "Jeb was almost a phantom governor."

BUSH'S success underscored the turmoil within the Florida Democratic Party. For decades, the Democrats could rely on party loyalty and the sheer charisma of icons like Chiles and governor-turned-senator Bob Graham. But in recent years they have slipped, and in 1996 the GOP took the state legislature for the first time since the Grant Administration. Republicans hold the majority of Florida's seats in Congress, and they may take five of six elected state cabinet positions this fall. And now the Democrats are racially divided: in January, Democratic legislators ousted State Rep. Willie Logan from the party leadership and replaced him with a white woman, alienating the Black Caucus. A Bush win could leave the nation's fourth largest state almost entirely in Republican hands.

"We have compassion fatigue," Bush said in Alachua, delivering what has become his credo, "because we've defined compassion by how much money we've been willing to send to Tallahassee and Washington." Properly understood, "compassion is defined as 'suffering with,' acting on a sense of consciousness when you've seen the hurting and the misery around you."

This sounds like a less wonky version of Jack Kemp; Bush's proposals complete the analogy. On education, Florida's most pressing issue, his plan calls for grading schools based on their students' improvement on standardized tests. A school that moves up a grade, or that receives an A, will get more autonomy and funding. Students at a school that receives an F for two consecutive years will get vouchers. Bush, who is pro-life, favors duplicating foster-care and adoption reforms that have been successful in Sarasota, where non-profit groups provide all services, resulting in a 65 per cent increase in adoptions. He tackles gun control, normally a difficult issue for Republicans, by calling for increased sentences for those who use guns in a violent crime.

Bush's comprehensive urban-renewal proposal seems most representative of his campaign. The plan uses small-scale government activism to achieve conservative goals-small-business loans, support for faith-based ministries, beefed-up drug and crime prevention-along with warmer and fuzzier ones, like new-parent counseling and a statewide mentoring program. One component involves turning over foreclosed or abandoned houses to qualified poor families (drug-free, crime-free, at least one parent employed), which would be required to pay fair market rent and refurbish the house. If the family fulfills these obligations, after five years the home is theirs.

These sorts of policies have helped Bush capitalize on the Willie Logan flap, and he has won the endorsements of a number of black officials, notably State Sen. Jim Hargrett, and Logan himself. After winning only 4 per cent of the black vote in 1994, Bush is now expected to get as much as 20 per cent.

Outsiders have worried that Bush is moving too far to the center, but Florida conservatives are with him. "Jeb is showing how we can apply conservative principles to practical, everyday situations," says State Rep. Victor Crist. "Being a conservative doesn't mean you are cheap and cold-hearted, it means being compassionate and responsible in utilizing limited resources." Still, the question remains: Can the kinder, gentler Jeb say no when he has to?

Buddy MacKay hasn't helped his own chances. During his three decades in public life he has earned a reputation for moderation and competence but not brilliance, and his unfocused campaign is drawing comparisons to Bob Dole's failed 1996 presidential run. Recently he has shown signs of life, attacking Bush on vouchers ("They will devastate the public-school system") and unveiling his own education and inner-city proposals. But his proposals, introduced after Bush's, have a me-too quality. "The people who know Buddy think very highly of him," says Jack Latona, a Fort Lauderdale City Commissioner and a Democrat who has endorsed Bush. "It's just you look at him and say, where are we going?"

Willard Fair brings up a visit Bush paid recently to a small group of migrant workers in the farm town of Immokalee. "He's so far ahead in the polls, he didn't have to go out there for 41 people," says Fair. "He didn't bring any cameras, and he didn't make any promises, he just listened to what they had to say. That's raw compassion."

Although Bush's commanding lead-52 per cent to 37 per cent in the most recent Mason-Dixon poll-is likely to shrink as election day approaches, his campaign is beginning to have the feel of a victory tour. "People love him," says John Thrasher, who has accompanied Bush on parts of the trail. "It's like walking around with Elvis."

Maybe so, but was the King ever this nice? o