By Bill Cotterell
CAPITAL CURMUDGEON
Tallahassee Democrat

The long and difficult path back to power for the Florida Democratic Party runs through the House of Representatives, and it starts in Broward County next year.

During the installation ceremonies for Speaker-designate Marco Rubio last week, Gov. Jeb Bush noted that Rep. Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, was lurking on the back row of the House chamber, biding his time and carefully plotting a restoration of Democrats to the dominance they enjoyed for a century and a quarter in the Capitol. The governor said it only half-jokingly.

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But Bush acknowledged that a Democrat will reside in the Governor's Mansion someday. The party that has been so anemic for the past 12 years - a time span that, not coincidentally, dates back to his first run for governor - will eventually control the House, Senate and Cabinet, too.
It just won't be next year. Not even the most optimistic Democrat expects a swing of 25 seats, which is what the Democrats would need in order to take the gavel away from Rubio and give it to Gelber.

With the way district lines are drawn, and the way lobbyist campaign contributions gravitate $2-to-$1 (at least) toward the party in power, Democrats might as well get comfortable on the back rows of the House for the eight-year term limits of everybody who gets elected next year. But 2006 will mark the end of the Bush era in Florida politics - and the first election in five cycles without the governor or his brother atop the ticket - which is enough to quicken the pulse of diehard Democrats.

Jeff Ryan, who raises money for Democratic House candidates, explained it to the North Florida Democratic Club early this week. For the first time, he said, term limits work in favor of the Democrats - not enough to change the landscape, but enough to get something started.
Of the 19 House members maxing out their fourth terms, 12 are Republicans - most of them in safe GOP districts, of course. At least four other Republicans who could serve another term or two, if they wanted to, are running for Cabinet seats. And two non-term-limited GOP House members are trying to move up to the Senate.

So are at least six Democrats with safe districts in the House. That's a side effect of term limits. Sometimes you have to run for higher office when a vacancy presents itself, rather than waiting until the clock runs out on your House job.

There could be more. Election-year legislative sessions do funny things to members.
Holding 84 of the 120 House seats and 26 of the Senate's 40 jobs, Republicans don't have much left to win. Fully controlling the redistricting process for the first time in 2001-02, they shoehorned the Democrats into mostly urban districts and kept the surrounding suburbs for themselves.

Out in the Panhandle, west of Leon and Gadsden counties, the GOP wins conservative, rural North Florida regions where people register as Democrats but vote for Republicans.
That's what makes Broward County such a big piece of the political equation next year. It's the biggest Democratic stronghold in the state, having given John Kerry and Bill McBride their largest votes in the past two statewide races. And it will have some hot races to boost turnout.
Five of the seven Democrats who are term-limited out of the House next year represent parts of Broward. So do both term-limited Democratic senators running for higher office - Fort Lauderdale's Walter "Skip" Campbell, who's going for chief financial officer, and Ron Klein of Boca Raton, trying for Congress.

Two non-term-limited House members, both Democrats, are running for Campbell's and Klein's Senate seats.

All of this means a big turnout in the Democratic primaries in Broward. For all practical purposes, the winners of those races will be chosen in the September primaries.
That might be good for Scott Maddox's campaign for governor. The former Tallahassee mayor ran surprisingly well in the 2002 primary for attorney general, leading a four-man ticket in Broward by nearly 10,000 votes.

Maddox grew up in South Florida and spends a lot of time in the Miami-West Palm Beach corridor. The fiasco that followed his tenure as Democratic Party chairman last May - an IRS tax levy, the Election Commission complaint over his handling of Leon County Democratic Party finances - won't help him in a county where Democrats take their party very seriously.
But for Democrats, there's nowhere to go but up. And they may as well start where their strength is.