GOP Urges Bense To Take On Harris
Published: May 4, 2006
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From the White House to the governor's mansion, Republicans dismayed by the sinking U.S. Senate campaign of Katherine Harris are counting on an unlikely rescuer.
Poised as the possible answer to their prayers is a little-known farm-boy-turned-multimillionaire who overcame dire poverty and the early death of his parents to become one of the Florida Legislature's most popular leaders.
Allan George Bense, the 54-year-old speaker of the Florida House, who once mopped floors in Tallahassee as a janitor and last month referred to himself as "a nobody" beyond the state capital, could be on the verge of taking his Panhandle rags-to-riches story to a national level.
Gov. Jeb Bush, echoing publicly what many Republican leaders hope privately, thinks Bense would make "a great United States senator." Tuesday, Bush said he hopes someone challenges Harris, adding "I have doubts about whether she can win."
If Bense agrees to run a last-minute campaign, a decision he is to announce after the Legislature adjourns Friday, he could restore at least some plausibility to the party's visions of defeating incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson.
Overcoming Harris, the defiant, well-known Longboat Key congresswoman in the Sept. 5 Republican primary is hardly a sure thing, even for a savvy politician known for making friends and finding common ground between adversaries.
But next in the gauntlet would be an even tougher challenge. Nelson is an entrenched incumbent who, while Harris dipped into her own millions to keep barely afloat, quietly raised far more millions to defend his Senate job.
Bense has been driven from a young age - first by his mother, who never seemed satisfied with all the hits he racked up in Little League, then by necessity, when he struggled to make ends meet after his parents died. As a Bay County teen, he had to scrape up an extra $10 a week just to pay for his mother's funeral.
Still, it would take all this drive and more, including a rapid alignment of unpredictable forces, to succeed in the Senate race.
Even his mentor and lifelong friend, Charlie Hilton, wonders if the gifted politician would be taking on too much.
"I have worried about him jumping on this horse," said Hilton, a multimillionaire Bay County businessman who has been a father-figure to Bense for nearly 40 years.
"He's starting so late, and he doesn't know how to lose. I just fear that he will overdo it, that he will hurt himself physically."
Bense will face the need to raise perhaps $20 million, get himself known across the state, fight a tough primary battle, then an even tougher general election battle - all within a scant six months. And all in a year when political winds seem to be blowing against Republicans.
University of South Florida political science professor Darryl Paulson gives Bense little better than "an outside chance."
Two Challenges Ahead
Even with bad publicity, over her indirect link to a congressional bribery scandal and defections from her staff, Harris remains far better known than Bense and highly popular among hard-core Republicans. She also appears willing to spend her personal wealth on her campaign.
Nor would Bense be immune from intensified scrutiny of his business dealings, including a landfill where questions have been raised about asbestos dumping while he was an investor.
On the bright side, there's some precedent for last-minute success in Florida, especially by a candidate with important party backing whose personal story translates into emotive TV advertising.
What's more, the Bush brothers would probably activate their fundraising machine to help Bense raise money quickly.
They did it in 2004 when Mel Martinez entered the U.S. Senate race at the urging of party leaders.
Some of that money paid for advertising highlighting lawyer Martinez' origins as a child immigrant from Cuba who lived with foster parents.
One unknown is whether traits celebrated by his friends in Tallahassee will translate in the statewide stage, especially on TV, where most voters learn about candidates.
Known as unpretentious and accessible, Bense has a sharp grasp of details. While other politicians are wary of reporters, he meets with them regularly. Where egos and intellect abound, he seems straightforward and humble.
Even if Bense loses, he could benefit from building his name and reputation with the party - as Charlie Crist did in 1998.
Then a little-known state senator, Crist mounted a nearly hopeless U.S. Senate challenge to political icon Bob Graham. Florida voters came to recognize Crist's name, helping him run successfully for attorney general four years later.
Paulson predicts Bense "will be viewed as the loyal soldier who took on an almost impossible challenge to help the party. He'll earn credits for a future campaign."
Like other successful people who faced challenges early in life, Bense is not easily dissuaded - or satisfied. Friends say his mix of confidence, drive, and humility stem from his upbringing, in dire poverty after a bank foreclosed on the family dairy farm.
His father died when he was 14 and his mother a few years later. He likes to tell friends how he had to mature early, and when life is tough as that at an early age, nothing ever seems so difficult.
Once he had the money, many years later, and though he owned a nice home and other properties by then, he bought back the family farm.
"He's one of the most extraordinary people I ever met - a totally self-made man who became successful in the construction industry but never changed his personality," says Tom Feeney, a Republican congressman from central Florida, and once a state House speaker himself.
"I can just picture him on a construction site with his sleeves rolled up, as if he's the newest hire on the job - not a guy worth several millions of dollars."
To be more precise, $11.1 million in 2004, according to financial disclosure records. He earned $1.1 million that year, mostly from real estate investments and rentals.
That's a long way from the days when, to put himself through Florida State University, he worked as a janitor, wielding a mop in the city where he would someday pound the speaker's gavel.
A master's degree in business administration, common-sense acumen, and association with people such as Hilton enabled Bense to achieve success at road building, construction and developing golf courses.
Early on, in business, Bense established himself as someone who could accomplish difficult missions by finding ways in which groups of people might agree.
When Bense got his first job in the public spotlight, as a member of the Bay County Tourist Development Council, "it was just like spreading calm on the water," Hilton recalled.
Almost immediately, Bense engineered 8-0 votes. "He has this unusual ability to get divergent people and get them to recognize where they do agree."
Bense has that reputation in Tallahassee, too, where he awed Democrats by inviting them to hitherto Republicans-only committee planning sessions.
'At A Crossroads'
Last week, legislators of both parties, in an extravagant display of appreciation, gave him a bright blue 1977 Corvette.
Though people can usually count on his conservative politics, "because of his leadership demeanor, he appeals to folks outside of his philosophical thoughtstream," said former Florida Republican Party chairman Al Cardenas, who is among party leaders urging Harris to get out and Bense to get in.
Bense sometimes gives the impression that he could walk away from politics and return to the quiet life of Bay County. But his mentor, Hilton, spotted Bense's political drive more than a decade ago, when he sat the younger man down for a father-and-son talk.
"I think right now you're at a crossroads. You can either be one of the richest or the richest man in Florida, or you can be governor. But you can't be both. You need to really think that through."
In some ways, Bense offers a countrified version of Ronald Reagan's aw-shucks charm, which sometimes causes people to mistake his personality for his politics.
But beneath the calm and friendly demeanor, friends say, Bense is a ceaselessly ambitious man.
"He's very competitive, but in a charming and humble way," Feeney said.
"He does not like to lose," Hilton said.
When he coached soccer teams, his teams always had to be No. 1 - and would be, "through his inspiration," Bense's mentor said.
Still, he doesn't seem to take himself too seriously.
"I'm a nobody," he said recently, when asked at the Florida Capitol about getting into the Senate race. "Beyond these four blocks, I'm a nobody."
He acknowledged the lack of name recognition would be hard to overcome.
But so, apparently, would his achieving nature.
A few moments later, the man who could run for Senate said, "what probably intrigues me more about it is the challenge. Because all my life I've loved a good challenge."
REP. ALLAN G. BENSE
BORN: Oct. 6, 1951
RESIDENCE: Panama City
FAMILY: Wife, Toni Lynne Johnson; three children.
EDUCATION: Bachelor's and master's degrees, Florida State University.
CAREER: Businessman, banker and contractor; first elected to House in 1998; lost 1992 race for state Senate; speaker of the House from 2004 to 2006.
AFFILIATIONS: Bay County Tourist Development Council, Bay County Chamber of Commerce, former chair of House Procedures Committee, House Appropriations Committee, Select Committee on Medical Liability Insurance
