Joel Eskovitz: Mack IV on media; Graham's replacement

The former state House member for Fort Lauderdale contends it's ridiculous that he has to defend his Southwest Florida credentials, noting he is the only person seeking Porter Goss's U.S. House seat who grew up in the area.

"The voters are more interested in my record in the Legislature and what I stand for than they are in where I've been living," Mack said. "They want to know that someone has the same feelings and belief systems that I do on Florida issues."

He says members of the press are the only people talking to him about the carpetbagger claim. But Collier County Republican Party Chairman Mike Carr has repeatedly gone on record with his belief that Lee and Collier counties "should not have to import a candidate."

"It bothers me that he hasn't been here for a long, long time," Carr said.

Mack was back in Washington this week, one of his homes after leaving Cape Coral when his father was elected to Congress in 1982. Mack spent two years at McLean High School before graduating from a Virginia military academy and eventually ending up in southeast Florida.

The congressional hopeful sought support from members of the Republican leadership and a few Florida members of Congress. He also held a fund-raiser in his effort to raise $2 million for the House race.

Mack was noticeably irritated by the residency question.

"It appears my campaign will have to focus people toward the issues," he said.

As far as those issues are concerned, Mack is on the big-picture portion of the campaign, mentioning fighting the war on terror and making the tax cuts permanent among his chief goals.

Mack has met with Goss, who has told him he will not be endorsing any of the candidates in the primary. Lee County commissioners Andy Coy and Doug St. Cerny and state Rep. Carole Green are also seeking the Republican nomination next year.

Riding the polls

Now that Sen. Bob Graham has bowed out of the race for his seat in 2004, who is his heir apparent in the Democratic Party?

The most recent statewide poll indicates it is former state Education Commissioner Betty Castor, whose lead is double her nearest competitor in a three-way race with Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas and Rep. Peter Deutsch of Hollywood. The lead shrinks from 16 to 10 percentage points when Rep. Alcee Hastings of Miramar -- who is still mulling over his options -- is added to the mix.

Castor receives 26 percent of the vote in a four-way race, followed by Hastings, Deutsch and Penelas. In a three-way race, she gets nearly a third of the vote, with Deutsch and Penelas splitting another quarter of the likely Democratic voters.

The poll, conducted by a firm Castor's campaign hired, has a margin of error of about 4 percentage points.

Neither Penelas' nor Deutsch's campaign dispute the results, saying the campaign has really just begun since Graham left the race on Monday. Both camps also noted Bill McBride trailed former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno by a large margin in early polls before the 2002 Democratic primary in the governor's race. McBride won the nomination but went on to lose to Gov. Jeb Bush.

And while Castor uses the poll to push up her fund-raising numbers to compete with Deutsch and Penelas, her opponents note a different statistic: More than one-third of the voters are still undecided. Those are more than enough people to swing the election in any direction next year, when only a plurality of voters is needed to win because the runoff election was eliminated.

Joel Eskovitz is the Daily News' Washington correspondent. He can be reached by e-mail at eskovitzj@shns.com.