2004 United States Senate election in Florida

United States Senate election in Florida, 2004

November 2, 2004

157px Nominee Mel Martinez Betty Castor Party Republican Democratic Popular vote 3,672,864 3,590,201 Percentage 49.43% 48.32%

County Results

Senator before election Bob Graham Democratic Elected Senator Mel Martinez Republican

The Florida Senate election of 2004 was held on November 2, 2006. The incumbent Democratic senator, Bob Graham, decided not to run for reelection. Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Mel Martinez narrowly defeated State Senator Betty Castor. Martinez's term will end on January 3, 2011.

Primaries

Democratic

In the 2004 Senate campaign, Castor faced two Democratic candidates, Miami mayor Alex Penelas and Hollywood congressman Peter Deutsch, in the Democratic primary election. The primary election was held on August 31, 2004.

The winners of the respective races are colored in lime.

Democratic Party Vote

6,835 out of 6,836 precincts are reporting. That is 99% of the total vote count in the state.

Candidate Number of votes Percentage of votes Betty Castor 667,285 58% Peter Deutsch 324,131 28% Alex Penelas 115,151 10% Bernard Klein 47,078 4%

Republican

Martinez faced tough opposition in former Representative Bill McCollum. Martinez won on the strength of the support of the Bush Administration.

Candidate	Number of votes	Percentage of votes
Mel Martinez	520,783	45%
Bill McCollum	359,291	31%
Doug Gallagher	157,869	14%
Johnnie Byrd	68,732	6%
Karen Saull	20,623	2%
Sonya March	17,753	2%
Larry Klayman	16,939	1%
William Kogut	3,691	0%

Sources:

• WTSP-TV (Tampa Bay) website
• WKMG-TV (Orlando) website

General election

Campaign

Until the spring of 2004, Castor's fundraising was much slower than her Democratic and Republican rivals. In the spring, the campaign hired fundraising staff from the defunct presidential campaigns of Howard Dean and Bob Graham, and subsequently posted much higher fundraising numbers over the summer. Online grassroots techniques devised for the Dean campaign (Castor became a Dean Dozen candidate in August) were one contributing factor: another was the support of EMILY's List, which named Castor as its highest-rated candidate for the 2004 election cycle, even when her support for banning intact dilation and extraction (D&X) abortions was not in line with the EMILY's List support for woman's issues. The latter was a source of criticism during the August primary heat - a complaint was filed by a Deutsch supporter with the Federal Election Commission accusing inappropriate coordination with EMILY's List. The complaint was dismissed by the Federal Election Commission in 2005.

Castor's handling of Sami Al-Arian became another source of criticism during the campaign. In June, The American Democracy Project, a 527 group founded by Bernie Friedman, began attacking Castor's handling of the incident, alleging that she had sufficient evidence to fire Al-Arian in the mid-1990s. Castor responded by stating that she never had sufficient evidence to fire Al-Arian, who was a tenured professor at the time. On June 29, Senator Graham, who had previously remained outside of the Al-Arian controversy, released a statement that "Betty Castor acted appropriately as President of the University of South Florida to deal with Sami Al-Arian": later, Graham and Senator Bill Nelson brokered an agreement between the Democratic candidates to refrain from negative campaigning against each other, although this agreement appeared to break down in the final weeks of the race, when Deutsch launched attack ads on television.

Despite these controversies, Castor won the Democratic nomination on August 31. She was defeated, however, by Republican candidate Mel Martinez in a close race on November 2, 2004. The overwhelming support for Martinez among Latinos effectively counterbalanced Castor's relatively high popularity among swing voters throughout the state.

There was some speculation that Castor would run for Governor of Florida in 2006 to replace Jeb Bush, who was ineligible for re-election due to term limits, but she announced in 2005 that she would not be a candidate.

Results

Florida U.S. Senate Election 2004

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Republican	Mel Martínez	3,672,864	49.5
	Democratic	Betty Castor	3,590,201	48.3
	Veterans	Dennis Bradley	166,642	2.2