Word: crist
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...epic boom. Southeast Florida - including Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach - ballooned into the nation's seventh largest metro, while southwest Florida - Naples, Cape Coral, Fort Myers - became the fastest-growing metro. Last year 82.4 million visitors found their way to this lost paradise. And last month Governor Charlie Crist unveiled a $1.75 billion deal to buy the U.S. Sugar Corp. and its 187,000 acres of farmland, a move that would help restore the Everglades. It's the state's best eco-news in decades...
...even boosters admit that Florida's Miracle-Gro has created many of its current problems. "We need steady growth, not crazy growth," Crist says. There's a sense that paradise has been ruined by awful traffic, overcrowded schools, overtapped aquifers and polluted beaches. The land of Disney dreams for the middle class is now a high-cost, low-wage state with Mickey Mouse schools and Goofy insurance rates, living beyond its environmental and economic means in harm's way. As peculiar as it sounds, this go-for-broke state of boundless possibilities - the land of Kimbo Slice, Miami Vice...
...pushing to suck water out of rivers to its north, local utilities are jacking up water rates as much as 35%, and South Florida's water board may cap withdrawals from Everglades aquifers. "The idea of water shortages down here never occurred to anyone," says environmentalist Shannon Estenoz, a Crist appointee to the board. "But we've got to change the culture because the status quo is unsustainable...
...Just as important, in light of the Democrats' portrayal of McCain as a continuation of the unpopular Bush Administration, Crist is working to present the Senator as a truly moderate Republican. Given McCain's history as a straight-talking G.O.P. maverick, that shouldn't be hard. But issues like offshore drilling have slowed his momentum in the Sunshine State - a new Quinnipiac University poll has Obama edging ahead of McCain in Florida for the first time - making it especially crucial that he win over not only the state's independents but potential crossover Democrats, including still angry Hillary Clinton supporters...
...After the pasting the G.O.P. took in 2006, Republican pols like Crist and Schwarzenegger vowed to pull the party "back to its roots," says Crist, "to the moderate, commonsense leadership tradition of Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. In Senator McCain we've nominated the best guy to carry that message." And in Florida, it's a banner whose colors will likely have to be more green than...