Daniel Tilson: An unofficial Crist-Scott poll — my mechanic is leaning to the right

I’ve taken an unofficial follow-up poll in Florida’s big Election 2014 Rick Scott-Charlie Crist race.

As in 2010, it was a one-person poll done face-to-face with my sometimes car mechanic. Call him Bobby.

Four years ago it was accidental, a pre-repair test drive conversation that touched on the upcoming gubernatorial election, with Chief Financial Officer and moderate Democrat Alex Sink battling corporate multimillionaire and hardcore conservative Republican, Rick Scott.

Bobby was and still is a middle-class white Democrat. I was surprised when he told me he was leaning toward Scott.

It was pretty simple.

“He’s run his own business, made a ton of money, I figure he ought to be able to figure out this economy” is my recollection of his reasoning.

I asked if he’d heard that the health-care company Scott ran had broken the law and ripped off Medicare and taxpayers for billions of dollars.

“Nope, is that right? I didn’t know that…”

He’d never heard about Scott pleading the fifth 75 times during a deposition related to the massive fraud case against Columbia HCA.

But he’d seen a lot of TV ads talking about Scott being a businessman and job creator, and talking trash about Obamacare.

That resonated with moderately conservative Bobby.

He didn’t know anything about Alex Sink and was surprised to hear she was a woman. He was also pleasantly surprised to hear a couple of middle-class friendly proposals from her platform.

But by the time we’d moved off politics and back to auto repair, he was still saying Scott seemed like an “experienced leader.” He said he’d most likely cross party lines and give Rick Scott a shot.

Fast forward.

Among many challenges that have to be met by Team Crist to beat Scott in November, Crist has to win a little more of the white vote than Sink did in 2010 (41 percent), and more Republican votes than Scott wins Democratic votes.

So I consulted Bobby to see how he was feeling about Scott-Crist 2014.

The answer, in a word, is undecided, but leaning to the right.

“Charlie was a pretty good governor for a while, seemed like, when he was Republican. Then the economy went bust, he quit being governor, changed to Democrat, changed lots of positions…”

I asked him to be honest and tell me if that storyline came mostly from seeing all the Scott attack ads.

“Well…yeah, I don’t have time to be reading about it all. I know TV ads don’t tell the whole story, but…Scott brought the economy back, created a whole lot of jobs, right, and Crist lost a lot when he was governor?”

I said it was the nationwide “Great Recession” starting in 2008-9 that tanked Florida’s economy and killed jobs, not Charlie Crist. I added that the majority of jobs created under Scott were low-wage ones with no benefits, jobs that left guys like Bobby and me paying taxes for working poor people’s public assistance.

I said that under Scott, average wages and household incomes had gone flat and poverty had mushroomed, while rich folks’ private wealth had grown faster than ever to record highs.

Knowing he’d since bought the little repair shop and was now a small business owner, I asked if it bothered him that all Scott’s big, important tax breaks go to Florida’s biggest businesses.

Bobby listened patiently and paused before asking:

“I don’t know…How come Crist isn’t on TV every day hammering away with all that, how come I’m finding out from you?”

 Daniel Tilson has a Boca Raton-based communications firm called Full Cup Media, specializing in online video and written content for non-profits, political candidates and organizations, and small businesses. Column courtesy of Context Florida.