Races of the week: Shaw vs. Bloom

Florida's 22nd District

The last time a campaign by Florida Republican Rep. Clay Shaw was featured as a "Race of the Week" in HuMAN EvENTS was 20 years ago, when he was up against Democratic State Rep. Alan Becker in the old 15th District around Fort Lauderdale (where Shaw had served as mayor for the previous five years). The conservative Republican hopeful won with a handsome 55% of the vote.

How the world and politics have since changed. Shaw (lifetime American Conservative Union rating: 83%), 61 years old, his black hair showing some silver at the temples, is now the fourth-ranking Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee and chairman of its Human Resources Subcommittee. He was the author of the landmark 1996 legislation that reformed welfare and limited the time people can spend on public aid. (President Clinton vetoed the bill in January of that year, but then signed it as election time drew closer.)

Shaw has also been a premier House booster of Medical Savings Accounts (MSAs), the .free-market-based health care concept. "Few understand the issue of MSAs as well as Clay Shaw," says Golden Rule Insurance head Patrick Rooney, creator of the MSA.

Back home, the 22nd District that Shaw now represents is much different from the 15th that first sent him to Congress. Reliably

Republican Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach are still in the district, but, through reapportionment, the condo-concentrated northeastern precincts of Miami-Dade now cast fully onequarter of the district's votes.

In 1996, this part of the 22nd gave Clinton a resounding 71 % of its votes and flooded Shaw's office with hostile calls when the GOP lawmaker voted for Clinton's impeachment two years later. And in the '98 election, Democrat Buddy McKay bested Republican Jeb Bush for governor in the district, even as Bush was demolishing McKay throughout most of the Sunshine State.

Now, Clay Shaw is in the race of his career against the Democrat best-positioned to take advantage of the district's changed demographics: 18-year State Rep. Elaine Bloom. 'fermed out" of her job this year by voterenacted term limits, the veteran legislator has already raised a whopping $1.5 million.

How did she come up with so much money? She's tapped many sources. For example, the pro-abortion EMIL,Y's List political action committee, which funneled $7.5 million to pro-abortion women candidates in 1998, is firmly in her corner. Also, the Democrat's openly homosexual son has sent out a national fundraising letter on her behalf, citing his mother's solidarity with the homosexual agenda. And Bloom is a strong proponent of gun control, supporting the photo-licensing of gunowners that Al Gore champions.

And there is another factor. In an era that supposedly frowns on ethnic and religious politics, Bloom campaign manager Jeff Garcia cites as one of the three key points in her strategy for the district: "[I]t's a high concentration of Jewish people" (Miami Herald, June 26, 2000). Taking a page from the Book of Lieberman, the brochures of the 62-year-old Bloom highlight the story of her parents, Julius and Ethel Bernstein, who fled Europe after World War II and point out that her father lost his mother in the Holocaust.

To Shaw, this is "a very foolish way to campaign. I hope that is not a wedge. We are beyond that in this country. There is bigotry on both sides, but you don't cater to that."

Shaw prefers to focus his fire on Bloom's record on taxes, including her 1985 vote in favor of a controversial tax on services from dog-grooming to funerals. She voted for its enactment and later its repeal. Asked about her record on taxes, Bloom simply cited the responsibilities of leadership in the Democratic-controlled legislature and said: ' "Did I vote for most taxes? Had to."

"This is likely the most Democratic district [in Florida] represented by a Republican," said Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesman John Del Cecato, "Clay has never had an opponent of his caliber." And that is why conservatives must rally to Clay Shaw in his moment of need-the fight of his life.

(Friends of Clay Shaw, P.O. Box 2188, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33303; 944-527-1992)

Copyright Human Events Publishing, Inc. Sep 22, 2000
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