Jeb's triumph pushes Democrats into abyss

Jeb Bush sailed to an easy victory over his Democrat challenger and secured a second term as the Governor of Florida by a margin of 56 per cent to 43. The victory gives the party of his brother, President George Bush, a crucial foothold to win the state in the presidential elections two years from now.

No victory for the Republicans on election night – and no loss for the now bedraggled Democrats – was more symbolic than this one in the Sunshine State. No other contest in the country was as important to President Bush both for family and political reasons, looking ahead to 2004.

While the Democrats are now limping nationally, in Florida they are entirely crippled. Voting on Tuesday left the party without a single government officer in Tallahassee, the state capital, and with so few members in the state legislature that they have been rendered virtually irrelevant. "We're staring into the abyss," conceded Dan Gelber, a Democrat state representative from Miami.

Recriminations will focus on the Democrat runner, Bill McBride, who singularly failed to translate obvious weaknesses in Jeb Bush's record, with a flagging state economy and a stumbling school system, into a platform for victory. Analysts were quick to attack his campaign, which failed to galvanise African-Americans.

Democrats were wistful, moreover, that they had bungled the opportunity to get their own back for the calamity of 2000, where, after five weeks of recounting and gazing at hanging chads, the state was declared for President Bush by a razor-thin majority, giving him the keys to the White House.

The Republican candidate Katherine Harris won a Florida seat in the House of Representatives by defeating Democrat Jan Schneider, a friend of Bill Clinton. Ms Harris, the former Florida secretary of state, presided over Florida's disputed vote count in the 2000 presidential campaign.

And inevitably thoughts turned to the 10 September Democratic primary when Mr McBride managed barely to outpoll Janet Reno, a former US attorney general, to win the party's nomination to challenge Mr Bush. While Ms Reno was a veteran with huge name recognition, Mr McBride, a Tampa businessman, was a political neophyte who had never before run for office.

Tellingly, Mr McBride failed even to win in Miami-Dade county, which should have been part of his base, and his margin of victory in neighbouring Broward county, always a Democratic stronghold, was far narrower than it should have been. Democrats had been banking on African-Americans in southern Florida to rush to their support if only to protest against the 2000 result when there were widespread complaints that they had been disenfranchised. Instead, turn-out among blacks was disappointing, apparently because while they largely disliked Mr Bush, they had not warmed to Mr McBride.

Jeb Bush's victory conveyed "tremendous bragging rights going into 2004", said Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida. The Democrats, with such a diminished presence in Tallahassee, will now struggle to raise enough money to compete effectively in the 2004 race.