The Trouble With Reno

It's Women's Equality Day, a sweltering Sunday afternoon at a Unitarian church in Boca Raton. You can tell it is Janet Reno's turf by the way the National Organization for Women crowd hangs on every word of the first female U.S. Attorney General. Whoever the first female U.S. President is, Reno says, she will listen more closely to "all Americans, like the single mother who feels alone and frustrated." But then Reno says something that leaves the N.O.W. women, dressed in suffragist purple, looking puzzled. She talks about "the young white man who wants to be an FBI agent but feels he doesn't have a chance because of affirmative action." Huh?

It's not the kind of sympathy usually expressed at a feminist rally. But if Reno wants to be the first female Governor of Florida--she is expected to announce this week--this is the kind of "centrist" note she will have to sound in her speeches. Often. On the one hand, since most of Florida's Democratic voters are in liberal South Florida, where Reno lives, the primary is hers to lose. But if her party wants to unseat Republican Governor Jeb Bush in 2002--exacting revenge for last fall's disputed presidential election and dealing a mid-term body blow to Jeb's brother George W. Bush--the candidate needs to woo conservative voters in central and north Florida. If Reno does run, Democratic leaders like Florida Senator Bill Nelson won't be holding the kind of dance party Saturday Night Live threw for her on TV last January. Nelson said as much this summer (though he has since softened his tone) when he warned that Bush's challenger has got to be "perceived as a mainstream person."

Since the Florida campaign carries such high national stakes, the two parties combined may raise a staggering $50 million to wage it. The irony is that Reno, whose celebrity could make fund raising outside Florida easier, is being tagged by so many as a liability inside the state. So far she polls better against Bush than the half a dozen other Democratic hopefuls. However, the President's younger brother thumped her 54% to 39% in a recent survey by the Mason-Dixon firm, with only 7% undecided. Reno enjoys a reputation as a principled leader who does what she thinks is right. But at the same time she bears the image of an arrogant prosecutor who often made wrong or inept moves in cases like Waco and Elian. "The Republicans will absolutely crucify her with negative ads," says prominent Florida attorney Dexter Douglass, who helped lead Al Gore's Tallahassee legal team during the presidential recount.