Latest Reno Fainting Spell Rekindles Election Doubts

MIAMI —  When former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno fainted on an auditorium stage in upstate New York, her hopes to become Florida’s next governor may have been seriously damaged.

For the 63-year-old Democrat, her public malaise Wednesday evening may prove to be the defining, dooming campaign moment, like former Secretary of State Edmund Muskie’s apparent weeping during the 1972 presidential campaign.

“I’ve been watching television this morning and seeing the videotape, and all the reports are mentioning her Parkinson’s, her health and her age,” said Susan MacManus, professor of political science at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

“I’m sure she is going to be pressured to reconsider her candidacy by some top Democrats,” MacManus added.

Flying home to Miami on Thursday afternoon, Reno was met by a phalanx of newspaper and television reporters at this city’s airport. She declared herself still “gung-ho” about running for governor and said voters should be no more worried about her health than they were for President Bush when he choked on a pretzel Jan. 13 and lost consciousness.

But Reno, a former state attorney for Miami-Dade County, did leave herself an opening for a withdrawal from the race.

“I always keep all of my options open,” she said.

The electoral battle to become the Sunshine State’s next chief executive is widely considered to be the marquee event on the 2002 political calendar, in large part because the Republican incumbent seeking reelection is Jeb Bush, the president’s brother.

On Wednesday night, after appearing at a fund-raiser and fielding questions at a news conference, Reno was supposed to deliver a speech at the University of Rochester. She had been talking for about 45 minutes on the rewards and challenges of public service when she lost consciousness.

Reno told the audience: “You’re going to have to excuse me for a minute. I’m going to have to sit down.” She crumpled to the floor behind the lectern, with a video camera capturing the sequence on tape.

A “very hot light” had been shining on her, Reno told reporters after flying back to Miami. She got “sweaty and hot,” then made what she jokingly called “a graceful or not graceful--I’m not quite sure--exit.”

Reno was rushed to a hospital, where she remained until being discharged Thursday morning. In a statement, a hospital physician, Dr. John Franklin Richeson, said Reno had “suffered a simple fainting spell, which we believe was the result of a busy travel day,” not eating much during the day and “unusually warm conditions” in the auditorium.

She was unconscious for less than a minute and “suffered no injury as a result,” Richeson said. He said blood, heart and brain-scan test results all appeared normal, and that aside from the Parkinson’s disease she has had for the last seven years, Reno appeared “in excellent health.”

“I feel great,” said Reno after towing her own carry-on bag up to journalists waiting for her at Miami International Airport. In the coming months, she said, she will drive the length of Florida’s peninsula in her pickup truck to listen to people and speak to them on issues she deems vital: schools, saving the Everglades, controlling growth.

As she talked to the press, her hands trembled violently at times. Reno, who was diagnosed with the progressive neurological disorder of Parkinson’s disease in November 1995, has said her physicians have assured her that her condition would not impair her ability to run for office or serve a four-year governor’s term.

However, many Florida Democrats are known to be worried that Reno, a polarizing figure because of her service in the Clinton administration, might drag a lot of other Democratic candidates for other seats to defeat if she wins their party’s Sept. 10 gubernatorial primary. Reno had already fainted at least twice before in public, in November 1997 and September 1998, and new questions about her health cannot help her.

“The question the party is going to have to confront is: If she goes down, does she take everything else down with her?” said Roger Handberg, interim chair of the political science department at the University of Central Florida in Orlando.

Another Democrat running in the gubernatorial primary, state Rep. Lois Frankel of West Palm Beach, said Reno must meet questions about her health head-on to allay voters’ concerns.

“She’s going to have to answer the questions that anybody who’s running for public office, anybody that’s fainted or collapsed, would have to answer,” Frankel said. “What caused it? Is it life-threatening in any way, and is it going to happen again?”

Amid fellow Democrats’ jitters about Reno’s electability, the campaign of another of the five Democrats who wants to be governor, Tampa lawyer Bill McBride, 56, has been picking up steam. He has actually outpaced the much better-known Reno in fund-raising and picked up a key endorsement in January, from the state teachers union, the Florida Education Assn.

State leaders of the AFL-CIO, a labor constituency that Reno should have been able to count on, have also made it no secret that they favor McBride, though they have yet to make a formal endorsement.

Another reason for Florida Democrats to ponder their strategy is an opinion poll printed in some of the state’s newspapers in the same Thursday morning editions that contained stories of Reno’s bout of fainting. The survey, conducted by Mason-Dixon Polling & Research, found Bush’s popularity to be on the increase.

Altogether, the Republican first-term governor enjoys a 58% favorable rating, up from 52% in July, the poll found. His unfavorable rating declined over the same period from 46% to 41%. Some analysts theorized Bush was basking in the overwhelming approval given his brother in the White House for his handling of the war on terrorism.

In public remarks, Florida’s governor was careful Thursday not to cast aspersions on Reno’s health, reminding people of his brother’s recent encounter with the pretzel. He said he had sent her a note of goodwill and expressed hopes for a “speedy recovery.”

“I imagine she had a long day. She was tired and collapsed,” said Bush, who also visited Miami Thursday. “Let me think of other people that have had that happen recently: the president of the United States who can, I guarantee you, outrun anybody in [a] four-mile run.”

*

Associated Press contributed to this report.