Grumpy Mood of Florida Voters

SLOGGING through the Everglades, posing with Mickey Mouse at Disney World or buzzing the beaches along the keys, presidential candidates are seeking out the voters of Florida and finding them mainly skeptical, grumpy, worried and wary. Aggressively conservative and proudly Southern despite its many refugees from the North, Florida may not reside at the political center of the U.S., but the morose attitude of its citizens toward problems and politics in this election year may well be typical. If so, the American voter is going to prove a prickly-prize for the politicians to grasp in 1972.

More than most states, Florida embraces the best and worst of America. The losers of life still flock to Daytona Beach to drive cabs and lick their wounds in the sun; the winners arrive at Palm Beach in private yachts and jets to relieve the pressures. Cuban refugees come to Miami to make a new beginning, while a million blacks chafe at the newcomers' ability to take away their jobs by working for less pay. Retired citizens in Hawaiian shirts fill the benches at Sarasota, while migrant workers pass silently through the state in their circuitous search for work. The whole makes Florida something special; the parts reflect the full range of U.S. society.

Chosen Havens. Turning his attention away from the candidates and toward Florida's voters, TIME Correspondent Joseph Kane finds Floridians most concerned about problems close at hand. They turn up their noses at the sulfurous smell of pollution in Jacksonville, squirm in the traffic jams on Interstate 95 in Miami, worry about rising crime in all of the big cities. Elderly residents of St. Petersburg object to dirty streets; they also successfully prevented U.S. Steel from building a condominium that would have obstructed a view of the gulf. The people of the state want Florida to adopt a "no growth" policy that would protect their chosen havens against overcrowding.

Unless they can relate such issues as the Viet Nam War, President Nixon's celebrated "journeys for peace" and the environment to their own lives, Floridians place these matters far below such more personal concerns as rising taxes, the high cost of living, the neighbor who seems to be living high on welfare and the demands that their children be bused to more distant schools. Statewide, Kane finds that busing, in fact, dominates all other issues.

Floridians speak bluntly about busing. "I don't want to bus my kids into the ghetto," grouses Bill Hardy, a life insurance supervisor in South Miami. "Christ! That's what I worked to get out of." Declares Mrs. Tina Curran, who has lived for 20 years in Miami but is moving to avoid busing: "I have no intention of letting my daughter Bambi be bused away to a black or white school. I'd do anything to stop it." Complains Ronald Stroud, harbormaster at Fort Lauderdale's Pier 66: "Massive busing is a disgrace to this nation. It destroys neighborhoods." Agrees William Langer, president of Miami Electricians Local 349: "Busing is not the American way of life."

Bunny Mother. While many whites cite early rising hours, traffic problems and inept teachers as a reasonable basis for their objections to busing, blacks see them only as rationalizations for deeper concerns. "There will always be a reason to mask the sexual fears," argues Fort Laucer-dale Attorney Alcee L. Hastings.

Welfare runs busing a close second as a cause of complaint among Floridians. They are not opposed to helping those who really need it, but from Fort Pickens near Pensacola to Sloppy Joe's in Key West, they assail those who they feel do not deserve it. "I see people going down to the welfare office with new automobiles and here's me driving a six-year-old car," protests Seminole County Deputy Sheriff William Chandler. "To me," adds St. Petersburg Motel Operator Robert Van Auker, "welfare is the most stinking thing there is."

The cost of living bugs every Floridian from Beverly Russell, the Bunny Mother at Miami Beach's Playboy Plaza, who had her rent hiked, to Maggie Murray, a ghetto grandmother in Orlando, who struggles to meet her $26-a-month electricity bill. At the same time, cattle farmers in central Florida worry about the price of beef. Drugs, too, are of great concern in Florida. "The root of most of our crime is drugs," insists an official of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce.

What do Floridians want done? Few really offer solutions, many demand of the candidates only that they cut back on welfare, stop the busing, "do something about the war," balance the budget, improve the quality of public education and get the Federal Government to mind its own business. They do not see many candidates who seem likely to do all those things and their gloom deepens. "All I want," says Miami Drawbridge Tender Peter Rozema, "is someone who won't give me a screwing." "We all seem to have the blahs," says Ken Bleakly, president of the Rollins College student body. "We need a national purpose and a candidate of honesty and virtue. Muskie talks about it, but he doesn't bring it off." Another Rollins student, Sam Crosby, wants to get one message across to all of the candidates: "Quit lying to me, man! I am not an idiot."

Visiting Rights. Many of Florida's voters have a feeling that the U.S. is going downhill. They resent this and feel powerless to check the slide. "Yes, we're going down," says Grace Cassidy, operator of a Daytona Beach notions store. "We're in serious trouble," agrees Fort Lauderdale Boat Captain Bob Twist.

Not knowing what to do about the state of the nation, Floridians turn back to less lofty matters. Maggie Murray wants more street lights around her apartment to keep noisy kids away. Rollins College first-year coeds want the right to have men visit their rooms. Animal lovers in Ybor City seek more space for the local zoo. Residents of Pompano Beach are aroused by a report that a school principal died from an overdose of heroin and those in Broward County by the arrest of a teacher for selling marijuana. In Leesburg, employers are mad at Disney World for paying wages above the prevailing scale. In Jacksonville, Mayor Hans Tanzler dismisses the complaints of environmentalists, whiffs his city's foul air and declares: "That smell means jobs."

Such local issues are the stuff that ought to influence national politics. But while candidates in both parties plead for votes in Florida's March 14 presidential primary, outside of the hard core of supporters that each aspirant commands Floridians seem unimpressed. This feeling goes well beyond the customary apathy at such an early stage in the presidential campaigning. "Nobody is talking to me," contends Bill Hardy. "I can't vote for anyone right now." Changing the minds of the nation's Bill Hardys will be a difficult and urgent task for the candidates in many states between now and November--and the health of the nation's political system may well rest heavily on their degree of success.

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