Orlando Sentinel 150: Monday Memory of Bill McCollum’s first election win – Orlando Sentinel

Elected to Congress to represent Central Florida after a surprise win in 1980, a little known Altamonte Springs lawyer named Bill McCollum became a fixture of local, state and even national politics for more than 30 years.

McCollum knocked off the incumbent GOP congressman in their primary and then defeated his Democratic foe on election day in a district that had more Dems than Republicans.

McCullum benefited from being on the November 1980 ballot when Republican Ronald Regan was elected president in a landslide and started a new conservative era for Florida and America.

McCullum would serve 20 years in Congress, gaining national attention as a member of the House committee that investigated the Iran-Contra affair in 1987 and then as one of the House’s mangers – the equivalent of a prosecutor – in the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999.

McCullum ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2000 and 2004, but was elected Florida’s Attorney General in 2006. He then ran for governor in 2010, losing the primary to eventual winner Rick Scott.

Here’s a look at how McCollum entered Central Florida political history, with a story about his first election to Congress by Orlando Sentinel Star reporter Jim Jennings from Nov 5, 1980. The story’s headline was “McCollum rides tide of GOP.”

Republican Bill McCollum, an Altamonte Springs lawyer who began an ambitious race for Florida’s sprawling 5th Congressional District only a year ago, on Tuesday followed Ronald Reagan into office.

Democrat David Best conceded defeat early this morning, saying “the Reagan landslide made it impossible. I don’t know what else we could have done except to change parties.”

McCollum was reluctant to claim victory, but after Best’s concession he said his campaign was won by “hard work and voter opinion that there needed to be change of direction in Washington.”

For Best, a Crystal River lawyer, it was the second defeat in his three-year effort to gain the office held since 1975 by Rep. Richard Kelly, R-New Port Richey.

A heavy voter turnout in the eight-county district, computer counting malfunctions in Seminole County and about 26,000 absentee ballots left the race’s outcome only mathematically in doubt early this morning.

“Obviously I’m optimistic. We’re up to something around 16,000 votes, and I will go to bed feeling pretty good,” McCollum said. “But Congress, let’s wait until all the votes are counted … just to be sure.”

With 181 of 318 precincts reporting, McCollum led by  92,944 votes to 76,259, or 55 percent to 45 percent.

McCollum, a virtual political unknown a year ago, jumped into a narrow, early lead and slowly increased it throughout Tuesday night and into this morning.

According to poll samplings by the Sentinel Star during Tuesday’s voting, McCollum appeared to benefit from the strong showing by Reagan.

McCollum was the choice of 86 percent of the Republicans questioned and 38 percent of Democrats who said they also voted for Reagan. There are 249,749 Democrats, 164,688 Republicans and 25,199 others registered in the district.

As returns began filtering in from the western part of the district, which Reagan was winning handily, the ballot trend also was toward other Republican candidates. “I feel very good, but I don’t know if it’s all coattails,” McCollum said.

“We’ve worked very hard. I think the public wants to see a change. I’m very optimistic that we’ll maintain that lead.”

McCollum, a member of a predominantly Republican Orlando law firm, began his campaign a year ago with little more credentials than his chairmanship of the Seminole County Republican Executive Committee.

But he put together a strong campaign team that applied the polish to his candidacy. That polish gleamed when McCollum got 44 percent of the district’s GOP vote on Sept. 9, leading state Sen. Vince Fechtel Jr. of Leesburg and knocking Kelly out of the primary.

He followed that performance on Oct. 7 by handing Fechtel, a three-term Florida House member before he moved into the Senate in 1978, the first loss of his political career.

During the campaign, McCollum: expounded his moderate-conservative philosophy, saying he had the ability to work both sides of the congressional aisle for the betterment of the district’s 750,000 residents.