"LOCAL CUBAN GRANDMAS HELPED STATE SEN. ALEX VILLALOBOS BEAT HIS TALLAHASSEE-BACKED, WELL-FINANCED CHALLENGER.
The Miami Herald - BY MARC CAPUTO [9/10/2006]

"Braving the rain and bucking Gov. Jeb Bush, the little old ladies of Senate District 38 trickled into the polls Tuesday to save a ''good boy'' named Alex Villalobos and beat back an unprecedented $6 million ad blitz -- much of it negative -- from state Capitol insiders.

''Chalk one up for the good guys, for the abuelitas,'' said Villalobos, using the Spanish word for grannies. ``Abuelita power won the day.''

The teachers unions and trial lawyers also pitched in with block-walk volunteers and $2 million to help Villalobos in his razor-thin win over Miami-Dade School Board member Frank Bolaños. Bolaños fell just 429 votes shy of toppling the Republican incumbent, who had run afoul of Bush due to three education votes.

The keys to Villalobos' success: the elderly and Hispanics. In the precincts he carried, 62 percent of voters were Hispanic and 25 percent were over the age of 64. In the precincts Bolaños carried, only 54 percent were Hispanic and just 18 percent of voters were over 64.

Many voters were troubled by the third-party attack groups that littered mailboxes with ads depicting Villalobos as Hillary Clinton, as a hippie or with killer Ted Bundy. A number couldn't understand why Bush and other Tallahassee insiders were targeting their senator, a grandson of Lolo Villalobos, a popular mayor of the Havana suburb of Guanabacoa.

And then there was the chicken suit.

Bright yellow and bearing the nickname ''Demolobos,'' the suit was worn by a Bolaños volunteer who shadowed Villalobos after the two camps failed to agree on a debate. Not everyone supporting Bolaños chuckled at the made-for-TV stunt.

''The chicken killed us,'' said Mark Wilson, head of the Florida Chamber of Commerce's Partnership for Florida's Future campaign committee. 'I heard accounts from the precincts where these little old ladies were saying, `We were with Bolaños until the chicken.' Who came up with the chicken suit?''

Michael Caputo, the Bolaños camp's spokesman, said he got the suit approved by the campaign. ''I fully expect the Wednesday-morning quarterbacking for a campaign,'' said Caputo, who recalls experiencing ''cultural differences'' when he introduced the concept of a chicken suit in Russian politics while working for Russian President Boris Yeltsin's campaign in the mid-1990s.

''I stand by the chicken suit,'' said Caputo, who is no relation to The Miami Herald reporter. ``The $200 we spent on that is nothing compared to the $6 million spent by our side.''

LATE TV ADS

Wilson said the biggest error was running TV ads of Bush's endorsement too late. He said many voters were unaware of the popular governor's choice when they voted early or by absentee ballot, which comprised 40 percent of all votes.

David Custin, Villalobos' campaign manager, said the Villalobos campaign neutralized Bush's effect by playing up the support of the congressional Diaz-Balart brothers and Miami-Dade's increasingly popular mayor, Carlos Alvarez. ''The guys from Tallahassee didn't prepare for that,'' Custin said.

Bolaños couldn't be reached for comment. Villalobos, who had not had an opponent in 14 years, now faces a write-in candidate and an unknown independent candidate, Leighton Lang, in November.

Villalobos has characterized the entire race as ''North vs. South,'' pointing to the Tallahassee money against him, from the chamber's group -- upset that Villalobos opposed a constitutional-amendment reform package -- to an education-voucher group called All Children Matter. Villalobos even suggested, without furnishing proof, that the much-reviled insurance industry was out to get him.

This year, Villalobos was ousted as Senate majority leader after voting against Bush's call to ask voters to change the state Constitution to allow for private-school vouchers and to scale back the class-size law to save money. Villalobos helped defeat the class-cap move in 2005 as well, costing him his bid to become the first Cuban-American Senate president in 2008.

Another reason Villalobos lost out on the Senate presidency: Some senators found him aloof and unwilling to raise money for them. Custin said many of Villalobos' opponents this election thought he ``was a prima donna, that he wouldn't sweat under the hot summer sun and work his district and pound the pavement. They were wrong.''

Bolaños' ground-game general, Hialeah Republican state Rep. Ralp Arza, downplays talk of serious errors, saying Bolaños could have won had ''the wind blown the other way.'' The weather likely played a factor. Polls showed Villalobos' support was with people who voted in three or more of the last elections. Those who voted less often favored Bolaños -- so they were no-shows when something as simple as rain made the Kendall-area's awful traffic even worse.

Still, Arza says, the major flaw was all the negativity that turned off elderly Hispanic voters.

DEFENSIVE ACTION

''Cuban Americans are Cubans first. They belong to a party second. The ones who turned out in the rain, turned out to defend one of their own. Bolaños wasn't being attacked,'' Arza said. ``A lot of Cuban Americans who are over 64 might not know who Ted Bundy is, but if they see a picture of one of their own as a hippie, they might not see that as funny.''

Bolaños was also up against the Florida Education Association and United Teachers of Dade, which benefited from Villalobos' votes and together chipped in hundreds of thousands to groups supporting him and attacking Bolaños. The UTD also mobilized more than 400 members to walk the district and call voters before and on Election Day.

The abuelitas didn't need any extra calls to get to the polls, where they flocked to Villalobos and kissed him on the cheek at one precinct.

''It was the dirtiest campaign I've seen in all the time I've lived here in the United States,'' said supporter Sarita Matos, 85. ``And I've lived here since 1961.''

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