Florida officials welcome spotlight on Fort Myers

BY BETH REINHARD, Miami Herald

President Barack Obama could be pitching his economic recovery plan in Michigan or Rhode Island, which reported the highest unemployment rates last month, or in South Carolina, which suffered the worst dip from the previous month.

But he chose Florida, where the free-falling real estate market received front-page treatment Sunday from The New York Times and was the subject of a major New Yorker article darkly titled, ``The Ponzi State.''

Fort Myers, meet the national press corps.

''This has all been very overwhelming,'' said Will Prather, chairman of the local Democratic party. ``It's a bittersweet pill and a dubious honor that he is coming to our community because it is ground zero of this economic recession.''

The intense national scrutiny recalls Time magazine's infamous sucker punch of a cover story in 1981 headlined, ''Paradise Lost?'' The state's political establishment was incensed by the description of South Florida as beset by ''crime, drugs and refugees.'' Six years later, community leaders called an emergency meeting to plot damage control after a cover story in The New York Times Magazine asked, ``Can Miami Save Itself?''

But today, some Florida elected officials are welcoming the attention in the hope that the state will nab its fair share of the largest economic stimulus plan in U.S. history.

''The fact that President Obama is putting Florida front and center in the economic stimulus debate is a success in and of itself,'' said Democratic Rep. Robert Wexler of Boca Raton, who will join Obama at the event.

``He's using the presidency to create a sense of urgency among the American public and to push the House and Senate to pass the stimulus bill, and Florida is an excellent place to do that.''

Obama was a constant presence in the nation's largest battleground state during the 2008 campaign. As part of the campaign's aggressive outreach into Republican territory, then-vice presidential nominee Joe Biden made two trips to Fort Myers. The Democratic ticket won Florida.