Over the last few months Katherine Harris has singlehandedly destroyed Republican hopes of unseating Democrat Bill Nelson in this year's Florida Senate race. But Democrats are now touting a new poll suggesting that the havoc Harris has wreaked in Florida might be even worse than imagined. Christine Jennings, the Democrat running in the race to replace Harris in Florida's 13th Congressional District, released a poll yesterday showing her leading her Republican opponent, Vern Buchanan, by eight points - 46 to 38 with 16% undecided.

The poll notes that Buchanan, a wealthy owner of car dealerships, emerged victorious after a hard fought five-way primary (into which he dumped a more than a mil of his own money) and also that Katherine Harris is sporting a net negative favorable rating in her old home district and trailing Bill Nelson by 9 points. Pollsters Hamilton Beattie & Staff conclude that the "fractured base of support" for Buchanan coupled with the "scandal plagued tenure" of Harris put Florida 13 "in the top tier of Democratic pick-up opportunities for the 2006 election cycle."

Let's not get carried away, shall we. This is still a Republican district: Bush carried it 56/43 in 2004 and it has a Cook partisan voter index of R+4. Buchanan has money, and you can expect the Republican base to firm up behind him in the coming weeks. Still, it's worth noting that Katherine Harris's ethical issues and her tragicomic Senate campaign have probably made this a much closer race than it would be otherwise.