Katherine Harris: Some Call Her Esther

Bartow, Florida: "U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris told a hometown audience Tuesday that she's braced for an uphill fight to unseat U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson in the 2006 election. Harris greeted a Bartow crowd of roughly 200 shortly after 5 p.m., having begun her inaugural campaign tour seven hours earlier in Sarasota...." Lakeland Ledger

Ms. Harris's roots are over here in my neck of the woods -- "Imperial" Polk County. One of her first cousins is state senator J. D. Alexander of Lake Wales. Her father is chairman of Citrus and Chemical Bank, with ten locations in Polk County, and her grandfather was the late Ben Hill Griffin, Jr., a citrus and cattle baron. Florida sports fans are familiar with the University of Florida's Ben Hill Griffin Stadium, named for him.

Following Griffin's death, feuds and lawsuits over his multi-million dollar estate pitted family against family. For some reason, sisters and their brother and spouses and cousins all seem to distrust each other mightily. The latest suit (to my knowledge) was settled by a federal court's ruling against the Harris family in 2003. Read about it in "Katherine the Great: America's new Queen?"

So..., apparently the Bush gang wants to elbow Katherine out of the race for a stronger candidate. Too bad: she many not be all that concerned with their druthers. If she manages to win the Republican nomination, the Bushites have little choice but to support her in the general election. If she beats Nelson, they take some credit. If she loses, well, she was a weak candidate so it won't be their fault (what a concept for a Bush, huh).


The Sarasota Herald Tribune offers a light-hearted piece -- including stunning pictures to assist you with the color combinations, "Harris' makeup isn't the issue; her making up stuff is the issue."

"U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris blew the lid off of this one, and I'm sure glad she did. It is brave of her, as this is clearly a case of a victim being gutsy enough to accuse those who have wronged her.

"And even with Harris so unexpectedly making her makeup a topic five years later, her makeup still isn't the real issue. It is, once again, credibility. It is the way she sometimes just says things no matter how silly or how disconnected from fact, and doesn't seem to realize it."

Mr. Lyons' conclusion:

"My advice: Harris should worry way less about how she looks and pay much more attention to what she says."