Field of 14 Candidates for Florida Governor

Farid Khavari, independent candidate for Governor of Florida.

Bill McCollum, Rick Scott and Alex Sink may be eating up all the media coverage surrounding the Florida governor’s race, but there are 11 other candidates who qualified to be on the November ballot.

The road for the third-party or “no party” candidate is often lonely.  There are few party officials, if any, giving you advice.  The media largely ignores you because you don’t have hordes of supporters or high poll numbers. And many experienced politicos who know how to get a governor elected won’t touch your campaign.

While McCollum, Scott and Sink beat each other up with prickly political rhetoric, the 11 other people are just trying to get their names and issues out to the voters – in some cases.  Some don’t even campaign.

Bud Chiles, the son of the late former Gov. Lawton Chiles, is the only one of the remaining 11 who likely could make a significant dent in the race because of his politically famous last name. A Quinnipiac University poll showed he could potentially carry 19 percent of the general election vote, something that could have a spoiler effect for the major parties’ nominees. Though his father was a Democrat, Chiles chose to run without a political affiliation.

Several of the other candidates who qualified also did so without a party. Farid Khavari, an Iranian-born economist, originally intended to run as a Democrat, but couldn’t get the attention of party officials, even after he presented them with a jobs plan. McCollum, Scott and Sink simply spend too little time on economic issues, he said.

“I was expecting they’d talk about the most important issue, which is economics,” Khavari said. “And nobody talks about it.  All they talk about is smear politics and rhetoric with… Rick Scott and Alex Sink and Bill McCollum.”

Khavari, who is also an author, bills himself as the only potential governor with a plan for economic recovery because the three mainstream candidates are too busy politicking. And the party’s tacit endorsement of one candidate right off the bat, he said, is insulting to voters.

“First of all, I think it is a slap in the face of all the voters, all Floridians who have to vote for a candidate and the party leaders choose for them,” he said. “This is not the Islamic Republic of Iran. This is America. They are portraying an Islamic republic and I left that country for those reasons.”

Unlike Khavari, John Wayne Smith isn’t trying to create jobs. He’s trying to do a little party building. The Libertarian candidate from Leesburg, also ran in 2006, garnering 15,987 votes. He views his candidacy more about getting his views out there and recruiting new members.

“We’re given a lot more attention in the alternative media than anywhere else,” Smith said. “And we’re pretty well honest and people are turning away from the old media. So we’re getting our message out there and we’re beginning to be very successful with it.”

Other candidates include Peter Allen, a Riverview business owner; Michael Art, a DeLand urban and landscape designer; Karl Behm, a Crescent City resident who says on his MySpace page that he actually won the 2006 election, not Gov. Charlie Crist; Daniel Imperato, a West Palm Beach resident who tried to mount a 2008 independent bid for President; Josue Larose, a write-in candidate from Fort Lauderdale; Mike McCalister, a Plant City Republican; Brian Moore, a Democrat who works as an executive recruiter; and C.C. Reed, a Miami businessman who ran in 2002 and 2006.

Originally published in the Jacksonville Observer