DAYTONA BEACH -Wearing a black leather vest emblazoned with his political campaign logo, U.S. Senate candidate Willie Logan wheeled onto the campus of Bethune-Cookman College on Thursday.

No one had to squint through tinted windows of a limousine or sport utility vehicle to see him. Logan, who is running with no party affiliation, is touring the state on a shiny new Yamaha 1100 V-Star motorcycle.

He bought it just six weeks ago and said he had never driven a motorcycle before. "I took a
20-hour safety course. Then a lot of trial and error," he says.

In his decision to retrace the late Gov. Lawton Chiles' famous walk across Florida, Logan says
he decided not to walk, but to ride the bike because it symbolizes his status as independent of
political parties.

It's time for Florida residents to think independently, he says, by wresting control of the
political system from the hands of the Democratic and Republican parties.

Logan began his tour May 8 in the Panhandle town of Century, the day he officially qualified
to be on the fall ballot. He'll be running against a slate of 16 candidates. Major party front-
runners are Democrat Bill Nelson and Republicans Bill McCollum and Tom Gallagher.

He plans to complete the tour July 4 in Key West. He was scheduled to travel to DeLand
Thursday night, and spend this morning meeting and greeting voters in downtown DeLand.

Thursday, Logan introduced himself to faculty members and students in the B-CC cafeteria.

Ryann Stewart, 21, and Jennifer Grant, 19, said they had never heard of Logan. After meeting him, however, they said they plan to learn more by visiting his campaign Web site, http://Logan2000.org

"He seems very nice, a people person," said Stewart, a senior majoring in elementary education.
Nice, perhaps, but Logan, 43, is no political novice.

Twenty years ago, he became the youngest elected mayor in the nation, leading the Dade County city of Opa-locka. At 25, he won a seat in the Florida House of Representatives, where he will remain until term limits force him to step down at the end of the year.

He found himself in the center of a political firestorm in 1998, when the state House Democratic caucus abruptly removed him as their speaker-designate. The move enraged black Democrats, who felt the party was taking them for granted.

Logan in turn endorsed Jeb Bush's candidacy for governor, but says his decision to run for
Senate as an independent is not an act of political revenge against his former party. He re-
mains friendly with prominent state Democrats, including U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, who invited
him to a campaign fund-raiser at City Island late Thursday afternoon.

Logan spurned numerous invitations to join the Republican Party and criticizes Bush for the "naive" way the governor tried to dismantle affirmative action in university admissions and state contracting without first enlisting support from those most affected by the actions.

He said he is enjoying building his grass roots campaign traveling from city to city and listening to residents' concerns.

Logan said he was surprised by the number of active and retired members of the military throughout North Florida. They worry about low pay and a lack of veterans' health facilities
close to their homes, he said.

Logan says he would support increasing the nation's military budget, but not to build new weapons "that will be obsolete in a week."

"The biggest investment we can make is in the men and women who join," he says. "We've got to make pay competitive enough with the private sector so we can keep them."

Republican contenders for the U.S. Senate seat now held by the retiring Connie Mack are:
Hamilton Allen Smith Bartlett; Tom Gallagher; Bill McCollum and Ray Sessman.  Democratic
contenders are Newall Jerome Daughtrey; David B. Higgenbottom and Bill Nelson. Aside
from Logan, candidates running with no party affiliation are Andy Martin and Darrell L.
McCormick. Joe Simonetta is running on the Law Party ticket. Joel Deckard represents the
Reform Party. "Nikki 0.," 0len C. Faulk, Richard Grayson, Brian Heady, and Argiris Malapanis qualified as write-in candidates.