A few hours into her 18-month campaign for governor, Chief Financial Officer and instant Democratic frontrunner Alex Sink said she’ll focus on the economy, jobs and housing and cited her experience working with bipartisan outfits like Enterprise Florida and Florida TaxWatch.

“I’m going to be positive. I’m going to be a problem-solver. That’s what I’ve always been. That’s the approach I bring,” Sink said in a brief interview.

(Attentive readers of the PostOnPolitics blog will remember that, on Tuesday, Attorney General and likely GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill McCollum was touted by veteran GOP operative Sally Bradshaw as a “formidable candidate because, in these times, people are looking for a problem-solver.”)

Sink is the clear Democratic frontrunner, endorsed already by state Democratic Chairwoman Karen Thurman and former Senator and Governor Bob Graham. She got a close-up view of a governor’s race in 2002 — and of the sometimes-fragile nature of frontrunner status — when her husband, attorney Bill McBride, emerged from relative obscurity to defeat heavily favored Janet Reno for the Democratic nomination. McBride went on to lose to Republican Jeb Bush in the general election.

From her husband’s campaign, Sink said, she learned “to be a good listener and to be responsive to the people of Florida and the things they are concerned about.”

Tags: Bill McBride, Janet reno

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2009 at 3:58 pm and is filed under 2010 campaigns, Alex Sink, Bill McCollum. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.