Jim Davis sheds calm on smear ads bankrolled by Big Sugar

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Photographs by Chris O’Meara/Associated Press, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/04/us/04florida.html?ex=1157515200&en=05a290a6122ae852&ei=5087%0A">NYT


Davis sheds calm on smear ads

By Dara Kam, S.V. Date
September 4, 2006

RIVIERA BEACH — Two days before the gubernatorial Democratic primary, candidate Jim Davis finally got mad.

A $4 million smear campaign largely paid for by U.S. Sugar Corp. and its subsidiaries may have done more to help Davis than harm him.
One misleading ad implies that Davis voted against a bill to hike the minimum wage. He didn't. Another slammed him for missing a vote on a resolution condemning Hezbollah attacks on Israel. Davis was campaigning in Florida and is endorsed by U.S. Reps. Robert Wexler and Debbie Wasserman-Schulz, who are Jewish.

On Sunday, working his way through Palm Beach County and winding up in Jacksonville, Davis shed his soft-spoken demeanor and assumed the swagger of a boxer bouncing back from the ropes.
Davis smacked the podium at a Delray Beach Democratic luncheon in exasperation over the ads and repeated his contention about U.S. Sugar.

"A Republican company is trying to buy an election. A Democratic primary election."

His emotional outburst persuaded at least a handful of voters who said they had originally intended to vote for opponent Rod Smith, whose campaign has close ties to U.S. Sugar.
"What changed my vote is his dynamics and his presence, and the whole atmosphere and the man. Today was a pivotal day for me," said Ruth Henry, 85, a Lakes of Delray resident.

But earlier in the day at New Macedonia Missionary Baptist Church, one of three black churches Davis visited in Riviera Beach, Bishop Thomas Masters put Davis on the spot about his 1990 vote to deny restitution to two wrongly convicted black men, Wilbert Lee and Freddie Pitts. They spent nine years on Death Row before Gov. Reuben Askew pardoned them in 1975.

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''I heard there was room here for sinners,'' Davis, a Tampa congressman, said while coming close to an apology for his 1990 vote in the Florida Legislature. ``I may have made a mistake. I am going to go back and look at what I did. If I made a mistake, I will be the first one to admit it.''

"I sat there for days and I listened to the evidence and I just did not hear the evidence I expected to hear. I have to live with that vote. A lot of people ask me if I made a mistake. I may have made a mistake. I don't know yet. I have to go back and read the evidence. If I made a mistake I'll be the first to admit it. The easiest thing I could do is stand here now and tell you what you want to hear but I can't. If I did make a mistake, I'll admit it," said Davis, who is a lawyer.

Honesty is a refreshing quality these days. Good luck on Tuesday, Jim Davis.

(All emphasis added.)