On Monday, I wrote about the “two panics” occurring simulatenously in the Charlie Crist campaign and Rick Scottworld.
The panic working its way through Scottworld was coming from Florida Republicans not working directly for the Scott campaign who found themselves in a frenzy after survey results from a respectable pollster began to circulate. The numbers were horrible for Scott, with one source saying the poll showed Scott down by four points to Charlie Crist.
Several reporters were picking up on this panic and coupling it with other polling Crist pulling slightly ahead of Scott.
In other words, the narrative was about to switch decidedly in Crist’s favor.
That’s when, I believe, a couple of veteran powerhouse lobbyists quietly stepped in and did for Scott what his communications team could not fully do: staunch the bleeding.
If you follow the bread crumbs, you’ll see that the leak to the Miami Herald‘s Marc Caputo of the SEA polling showing Scott with a two-to-four point lead likely leads to the door of Republican lobbyist John “Mac” Stipanovich.
Stipanovich is a wily devil, able to whisper in the ear of almost any prominent reporter. My bet is that “Mac the Knife” was fed up with the pessimism emanating from the rest of the GOP consulting class. So he, and his longtime running partner Brian Ballard, reached out to SEA’s Tom Eldon to do some polling for them.
Why Eldon? Because he’s close to Crist adviser Steve Schale. Because his poll was the poll about which Adam Smith wrote so favorably two weeks ago. Because it’s difficult to impeach the credentials of SEA.
Why leak the poll to Caputo? Because he’s going as Nate Silver this Halloween. He’s the number cruncher in the press corps, so why not feed him numbers showing Scott is ahead — a rolling sample, too, so Caputo would keep writing about it– to counteract any polling showing Crist with momentum.
It’s a masterful move by Stipanovich, who has spent the election cycle tormenting Democratic whipper-snappers like Kevin Cate and Max Steele. That it is likely Stipanovich behind this play makes it all the more difficult for Cate, Steele, and Co. to reverse the spin; he’s been playing the game for longer than they have and he ain’t about to let them do to him what they’ve done to Susan Hepworth, Matt Moon, and the rest of the flacks at the Florida GOP.
And if Stipanovich is, in fact, involved, you can bet your bottom dollar that not far behind him is Ballard. Mac and Brian have been working together for decades. Hell, they used to do the same thing for Crist what they are doing here.
Leaking some polling to a reporter may not seem like much in the grand scheme of things, but, in the fast-moving reality this race is playing out in, it’s a true power play acted out by those who know more than a thing or two about winning gubernatorial races.
