McCain presses on with antitax theme

Tours Fla. with small business sidekicks

ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGESJohn and Cindy McCain rallied with supporters yesterday at a building supply company in Ormond Beach, Fla. (ROBYN BECK/AFP/GETTY IMAGES)

ORMOND BEACH, Fla. - John McCain began his daylong "Joe the plumber" bus tour of Central Florida's Interstate 4 corridor yesterday without its namesake, the icon of his campaign's invigorated antitax movement who has conspicuously refused entreaties to appear with McCain.

In the plumber's place, McCain found a new army of small-business sidekicks to join him for morning coffee at a Daytona Beach diner: a florist, contractor, kitchen-supplies purveyor, and sports-bar owner.

The group then zipped down the road to Allstar Building Materials in Ormond Beach, a lumberyard owned by former football player Thomas Crowe, for a rally in a setting far more workmanlike than the crisp spectacles that have encircled McCain's recent rallies. His campaign's "Country First" banner hung from a forklift, and his supporters stood on the bed of a pickup truck rather than on bleachers.

"Can I ask our small-business owners to raise their hands?" McCain asked, inviting a glen of arms to shoot up from shirts bearing homey corporate logos, including Carter's Cabinetry ("Cabinets of Distinction") and Roy Hand & Son Roofing ("Specializing in Leaks and Repairs").

"There's no elitist group here," said Susan Wallsmith, a former teacher who 28 years ago founded Kidsko, which operates two child-care centers in Ormond Beach with a combined 65 employees. "Even the guys who own their own business, they're all workers. You'll see Mr. Crowe out at the sites carrying things."

As McCain now tries to distance himself from both greedy Wall Street executives and those workers who do not earn enough to pay income taxes, he has stumbled upon a new archetype to celebrate through the economic downturn: the small-business owner as working-class hero.

"Banks and huge corporations seem to be the tools of the problem right now, rather than the solution," said Byron E. Shafer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin. "Small business is somehow much more human: You can imagine yourself as a small business; you can't imagine yourself as a big business."

McCain, who stumbled last month in Jacksonville by declaring the "fundamentals of the economy are strong" on the same day that major financial institutions collapsed, found firmer rhetorical footing yesterday. "The only really good news in this terrible financial situation that we find ourselves in," McCain said after lunch with Latino entrepreneurs in Orlando, "is small business."

There is no broad agreement on what a "small business" even is. The US Small Business Administration was founded in 1953 to aid companies "independently owned and operated . . . and not dominant in its field of operation," but has since toyed with new definitions relating to a firm's revenue or number of employees.

"It seems to me that small business is in the eye of the beholder," Shafer said.

McCain, who earlier campaigned with big-business CEOs, has found the future of American small business in one man: Joe Wurzelbacher, an Ohio plumber who confronted Barack Obama over his proposal to end the Bush administration's tax cuts for households earning more than $250,000 per year - a threshold that McCain said would leave many self-employed businesspeople with a tax hike. Obama has replied that the vast majority of small-business owners don't earn $250,000 a year and thus would get a tax cut under his plan.

"The small-business people I know . . . I don't know any that make $250,000," agreed Will Euverard, a retired realtor in Deltona Beach. "To me, if they're taking home a profit over $250,000, that's big business."

A few feet away, Bob Lucas, a 69-year-old retiree who once imported Japanese pumps, laid out his own version of the plumber's math. Lucas sold his company five years ago for $480,000. In two years, he will receive a $235,000 balloon payment that, along with his Social Security checks, will put his annual income at about $270,000.

"If Obama gets in . . . it will take my whole pension and profit," Lucas said. "Obama's going to take it from me and give it to someone who's sitting home not doing anything? That's not fair."

While McCain traversed Florida, his campaign released an "I Am Joe" online video with testimonials from a truck driver, a caterer, and an antique-store owner. "We shouldn't be punished for succeeding," one said.

"We have found a way to break through on the economy," said Buzz Jacobs, McCain's southeastern regional campaign manager, from the parking lot of a periodontal office in Altamonte Springs. Inside, McCain was meeting with Dr. Gary W. Coatoam - whom McCain later referred to as "Gary the dentist" - in a waiting room.

"We're all Joe the plumber," said Odyssa McLean, standing in hospital scrubs across the street with coworkers from the Isis Cosmetic Medical Center, which specializes in liposuction. McLean, 25, said she had thought about one day opening her own business, "something medical, to help people," she said. "You've always got to get something to dream for."

Sasha Issenberg can be reached at sissenberg@globe.com