Word: florida
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Despite his sunny disposition, you'd think Charlie Crist would be feeling a bit down right now. Florida's Republican governor just watched a northern Democrat, Barack Obama, win the Sunshine State in a presidential election for the first time since Franklin Roosevelt won it in 1944. Obama also took Pinellas County, which includes Crist's hometown of St. Petersburg. And Obama only lost nearby Sarasota County - which since 1944 hasn't fallen to any kind of Democrat, Yankee or otherwise - by a mere 237 votes...
Certainly Crist isn't happy about John McCain's loss in Florida, especially since he endorsed McCain in the state's primary. But when Crist convenes the Republican Governors Association conference on Wednesday, which is being held in Miami this year, he won't be quite the damaged political goods that many McCain supporters are trying to paint him as. In fact, Crist and other bipartisan Republican governors may well be the model for how the GOP should rebuild itself after the crippling losses of both 2006 and 2008. (See pictures of John McCain's campaign farewell...
Moderates like Crist have long urged Republicans to adopt a more upbeat offensive in the 21st century, especially during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. He and many of his statehouse peers contend that McCain flamed out in Florida and the nation in large part because his campaign followed a negative attack plan. "Right now, people want commonsense answers to problems that are not always ideologically based," Crist told TIME last week. "When it comes to pocketbook issues, I think they want the Florida way, a more bipartisan approach that aims for the sweet spot between hard right...
...referendums aimed at overruling court decisions or rebuffing reluctant legislators - to restrict other rights. In Arkansas, for example, voters easily passed an initiative that did what state legislators had refused to do: ban adoptions and even foster-parent roles for unmarried couples, including gays. Now the state joins Utah, Florida and Mississippi as a place where gay couples cannot adopt. Trantalis and others are worried that even as the gay rights movement continues to win court victories, those very victories may prompt stronger and stronger backlashes, jeopardizing hard-won rights from local governments and the workplace, including adoption and antidiscrimination...
...results on Nov. 4 were negative for advocates of gay marriage outside California as well: citizens in Florida and Arizona also voted to make gay marriage unconstitutional. The vote was overwhelming in Florida, where voters favored Barack Obama in the presidential race but still decided 63% to 37% to make marriage available to heterosexual couples only. And in John McCain's home state of Arizona, voters reversed course just two years after defeating a similar, if more sweeping, ban on gay marriage...