Harris looks like primary winner, despite "disastrous" campaign

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Disaster may not be too strong a word for Rep. Katherine Harris' Senate campaign.

Her makeup and clothes are mocked on national TV. Her flirty interview style embarrasses her campaign handlers. Staffers keep quitting.

She has been linked to a shady defense contractor, caught in fibs and scolded for telling voters that non-Christian politicians "legislate sin."

Yet, on the strength of her name recognition, Harris is expected to win Florida's GOP Senate nomination today over three political unknowns, to the chagrin of many Republicans.

"This campaign will go down in history as one of the most disastrous ever run in the United States," said Jim Dornan, who helped launch Harris' bid as her campaign manager. He left three months later.

"I don't think anybody can envision any campaign being conducted in as poor a fashion as this one's been conducted," said Darryl Paulson, a University of South Florida political-science professor.

Her campaign shrugs off such criticism. "Our entire campaign team is looking forward, not backward," said spokeswoman Jennifer Marks. "We're energized and we're excited."

Republicans in Washington, D.C., and Florida tried to recruit someone notable to enter the primary against Harris. Those efforts failed.

Harris kicked off her campaign in August last year with rallies in Sarasota and Polk County, where enthusiastic crowds waved signs and cheered. Her speeches went off without a hitch.

Then came a live national-TV appearance on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes" that set the tone for the rest of the campaign.

Harris stood at an angle reminiscent of a beauty queen, with a smile to match. She repeatedly told hosts Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes that she was "excited" about the campaign, but she didn't have much of substance to say. At times she appeared to be flirting with Hannity.

As her campaign manager at the time, Dornan said he was "mortified."

"She doesn't interview, she flirts. And it's offensive to professional women and it's embarrassing," he said.

That appearance marked the return to late-night comedy-show mockery of Harris, who was the butt of jokes about her makeup during the 2000 presidential recount, when, as Florida's secretary of state, she declared George W. Bush the winner. Despite the ribbing, she became a conservative icon, and that fame propelled her into a House seat in 2003.

What followed were details of her relationship with Mitchell Wade, a defense contractor who pleaded guilty to bribing another congressman and who admitted giving Harris $32,000 in illegal campaign contributions. Harris had sought a $10 million federal appropriation so Wade's company, MZM Inc., could build a counterintelligence facility in her Sarasota district; the House rejected the proposal.

Her advisers told her to get out of the race, that she couldn't win. Instead, she did another interview with Hannity to say she would spend $10 million of her own money to stay in.

Soon after, all her key staff left. They described a candidate who wouldn't take advice, threw tantrums and bawled. The replacements she hired left after three months.

Her credibility came into question when none of nine promised elected officials showed up at a campaign event in an Orlando airport hangar. She said that a tree fell on the hangar where the event was originally scheduled and that people must not have known where to go. But it turned out that story was made up.

She recently called separation of church and state "a lie" and angered Jews and others by saying, "If you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin."

Florida Republican Gov. Jeb Bush said Harris couldn't win. Ditto state Republican Party Chairman Carol Jean Jordan.

But spokeswoman Marks says Harris is being greeted by "a tremendous wave of support" as she travels the state, focusing on issues instead of the controversies.