VENICE - Florida's race for governor passed a campaign signpost Wednesday.

Exiting public discourse - or what has passed for it in this fall's hyper-negative ad wars. You are now entering the turnout zone.

GOP-rich Sarasota delivered 81 percent of its Republicans to the polls in 2004 and had a turnout twice as high as the statewide average in the primary.

Republicans are likely to need all the votes they can squeeze from their base in order to overcome what is expected to be the lowest mid-term election turnout in recent memory.

From both campaigns, the topic was taxes.

''I'm running against a guy who I think is the first guy since Walter Mondale to guarantee that he will raise your taxes if he gets elected,'' Crist said Wednesday morning to about 40 volunteers at Sarasota County GOP headquarters. ''And as Ronald Reagan would say, that's not a good idea. That's who Mondale ran against. You remember the results of that race? Get ready, same result's coming.''

Before another crowd of seniors in a retirement community outside Tampa, he said Davis had supported the largest tax increase in Florida history while in the Legislature in 1990.

''Jim Davis voted to tax your insurance premiums,'' he said, referring to a bill that added fees to a range of services. ''You hear him talking, you'd think he'd never been in Tallahassee in his life.''

Dean and Annette Cochran wanted to hear about Crist's insurance remedies.

The retirees from suburban Sarasota County sipped coffee Wednesday in Bella Luna Cafe in downtown Venice while Crist performed his signature round of handshakes through the silver-haired audience.

''The insurance companies should not be making so much money,'' grumbled Dean Cochran.

Although Gov. Jeb Bush and other Republican lawmakers have said Crist's plan to prohibit national insurers from setting up Florida shell companies probably won't work, Crist told the Cochrans he would do it.

Sarasota GOP campaign chairman Eric Robinson said taxes and insurance were driving discussions, but the Republicans' finely honed turnout machinery would decide the election.

''You're going to make this happen,'' he announced to about a dozen phone bank workers at GOP headquarters in Venice. ''It's all about turnout. It's all about turnout.''

Davis, meanwhile, called a telephone news conference with U.S. Rep. Allen Boyd of Monticello and Suwannee County Commissioner Randy Hatch, who said the $19 billion in state tax cuts passed in recent years - and that Crist has been promising to keep - have shifted many burdens onto city and county governments.

Crist has proposed to make the Save Our Homes cap portable and to double the homestead exemption, which would shave the tax on primary-residence homeowners but not second-home owners or commercial property owners.

Davis said his message of cutting property taxes by $1 billion statewide, and forcing insurance companies to cut homeowner premiums next year, will resonate with North Florida voters better than the messages Gov. Jeb Bush and other Republicans have been winning with for the past 12 years.

Davis has said he would pay for his property-tax proposal by considering reinstatement of some tax cuts during the Bush administration, including the tax on savings and investments that was eliminated earlier this year.

''We've been trying to govern by 30-second sound bites for a long time now,'' said Boyd, who has represented the Big Bend in Congress for 10 years. ''That's what a campaign turns on.''

But, he said, ''there's a jillion issues that the chief executive officer, the governor of Florida, has to deal with,'' and those issues don't fit into smooth TV spots or bumper sticker slogans.

Boyd also said, ''There's a national wind that's blowing about the lack of responsible government'' by Republicans in Washington and Florida, which could help Davis. He said, ''There's an arrogance that develops around'' the party in power.

''It took 40 years for the Democrats to get it screwed up,'' said Boyd. ''It's taken much less time for the Republicans.''

{mos_sb_discuss:13} Life in Paradise or not

{mos_sb_discuss:8} Political and Social Soap Box

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