Election near, Hood fighting criticism

In the weeks leading up to the presidential election, Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood has taken Katherine Harris' place as the figurehead and lightning rod for the state's elections process.

BY ERIKA BOLSTAD And GARY FINEOUT

Miami Herald    18 October 2004

Glenda Hood is too practiced in politics and too polished in public relations to criticize the woman who ran Florida's elections before her.

Even if she doesn't say it, Hood makes it clear: She is not another Katherine Harris, the polarizing former secretary of state with a starring role in the infamous 2000 recount.

''It's very frustrating sometimes when people continue to live in the past,'' Hood said last week, as she attended voting equipment tests in Pasco County, something she pointed out Harris never did.

But as Florida's secretary of state, and as a Republican woman with close ties to the governor, Hood will be closely watched in the next two weeks before the presidential election.

And Hood will be compared to Harris.

Democrats and civil rights activists easily rattle off what they say is a pattern of partisanship from Hood. At every turn, Hood has acted to keep Florida voters from voting, said Scott Maddox, chairman of the state Democratic Party.

The most egregious, Maddox said, was Hood's effort to force county election officials to strike felons from the state's voter rolls, using a list that was found to be flawed.

NADER ON BALLOT

Hood also worked to keep Ralph Nader on the ballot in Florida, Maddox said, thwarting Democratic efforts to keep the third-party presidential candidate from siphoning away votes for John Kerry.

Hood defends her actions, saying much of the criticism aimed at her is residual partisan anger from the 2000 election, which she did not oversee. She also points out that she scrapped the felon list and ordered an audit to explain why it was so flawed.

She is especially critical of attacks on the state's touch-screen voting machines, pointing to hundreds of successful elections since 2002 using the equipment.

''Where were these questions, where were these challenges, where were these issues a year ago?'' Hood asked. ``I think there's a lot of confusion that is intentionally being created by people at the 11th hour to try to erode voter confidence in this state.''

Unlike Harris, who was elected independently statewide, Hood is appointed by the governor. The job, once a statewide elected Cabinet slot, became an appointed position at the beginning of 2003, when Hood took office.

`MARCHING ORDERS'

''I feel badly for Glenda Hood,'' said Maddox, who became acquainted with her when he was mayor of Tallahassee and she was the Orlando mayor. ``I never knew her to be an overtly partisan person. But it's clear to me that Jeb Bush is giving Glenda Hood her marching orders, and she is carrying them out.''

The criticism has extended to the courtroom. In the weeks leading up to the elections, the secretary of state has been served with seven voting-related lawsuits. The highest-profile of the bunch one that seeks a paper trail for electronic voting machines goes to trial today in federal court in Fort Lauderdale.

Nationally, Hood has taken a worse beating. Within the past several weeks, editorials in The New York Times accused her of ''blatant vote suppression,'' and former President Jimmy Carter worried in The Washington Post that Hood's role in Florida was damaging American efforts to set ``a global example of pure democracy.''

CARTER STUNG MOST

Of all the criticism Hood has faced, that of the ex-president, an internationally recognized voting expert, stung the most. She responded with a letter to Carter and an invitation issued repeatedly over the telephone by her staff for Carter to come to Florida and see elections in action.

Still, Hood chalks up the Carter letter to the politics of the presidential race. Hood firmly believes that much of the criticism, especially from Democrats brandishing lawsuits, is partisan sniping, done deliberately to confuse and polarize potential voters.

She refuses to take the criticism personally, saying that she learned long ago as mayor of Orlando to separate the personal from the political.

''It's not personal; it's the position,'' Hood, 54, said. ``That's exactly what it is. It's an easy target for the people who have an agenda. . . . It hasn't been until the past few months that, all of a sudden, certain questions have been raised.''

STARRING ROLE

It doesn't matter who is the top election official in Florida; anyone overseeing elections this year would assume the starring role in the state's storied elections history, said David Johnson, former executive director of the state Republican Party.

''Since Election Day of 2000, whoever was going to be in that job was going to be under a microscope,'' Johnson said, adding about Hood, ``I don't think she's partisan at all. The criticism we used to hear about her [in Orlando] was that she wasn't partisan enough.''

Hood's former colleagues with the Florida League of Cities describe her as a savvy, smart and hard-working politician who excelled at building consensus on her way to the top leadership post in the state organization and the National League of Cities.

Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle, a moderate Democrat, worked with Hood several years ago to lobby Democratic and Republican state lawmakers to enact limits on billboards. The governor and his brother, President Bush, are skilled at surrounding themselves with talented people like Hood, Naugle said.

''I'm a Democrat, but I still feel like she's doing a good job,'' Naugle said. ``I think a lot of this is just partisan sniping. C'mon, when did Democrats sue to take Ralph Nader off the ballot? If they want to criticize Glenda, they should look at their own actions.''

In the 2000 election, Hood served as one of 25 Republican presidential electors who cast Electoral College ballots for George W. Bush. The honorific role little-noticed until the 2000 election was Hood's last high-profile partisan act before being appointed secretary of state by Gov. Bush.

She points out that her job as mayor in Orlando was a nonpartisan one and that she has stepped away from potential conflicts a marked contrast to Harris, who served simultaneously as secretary of state and co-chairman of the Bush presidential election campaign in 2000.

Hood also notes that the only time she talked to Harris about the job of secretary of state was when she was appointed to fill the job after Harris resigned to run for Congress. Harris called Hood to congratulate her, Hood said, but that was it.

A HIGH PROFILE

But like Harris, Hood is clearly an up-and-comer within the party. She was mentioned as a potential running mate to Jeb Bush back in 1998, and her name frequently makes the list of future contenders for other high-profile offices, like the U.S. Senate.

As a result, Hood has been unable to shake accusations that she's pursuing a partisan agenda even though she refused last week to say if she plans to run for higher office.

''Since 2000, we have improved the technology, and we've improved the procedures,'' said Leon County Supervisor of Elections Ion Sancho, one of the most outspoken and maverick election supervisors in the state. ``But the administration of elections is more partisan now than it ever was before.''

PLEASED OFFICIALS

But many of the state's other election supervisors say they're pleased Hood recognized that elections should be her No. 1 priority.

Since taking office, Hood has visited the elections offices in dozens of Florida counties, including all the counties hit by the four hurricanes. She took poll worker training classes in Orange County and worked the polls there during the primary.

Kurt Browning, the supervisor of elections for Pasco County since 1981, goes out of his way to praise Hood for paying attention to elections, noting how she has visited his county three times since she took the job.

''Katherine Harris was concerned with the arts and international affairs,'' said Browning, a Republican. 'My thinking was that she thought `I'll do it if I have to do it.' ''

Hood has been more willing to face detractors, such as librarians upset by her support for a plan by Jeb Bush to move the state library to Nova Southeastern University.

So far, Hood also has been more willing to look into television cameras and answer questions. She will appear on ABC's Nightline and with Jim Lehrer of PBS to defend elections in Florida a departure from Harris, who refused to talk to the media during the 36-day recount in 2000.