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Will he run? Will he win? Willie Logan thinks he can.

But there is much more to the longtime Opa-locka lawmaker’s long-shot, "exploratory" campaign for the U.S. Senate than Logan’s own assessment of the landscape.

Talk about odds. Logan, a disaffected Democrat, is ready to run independently of any party. He is candid about the social test he faces in a far-flung state which never has seated a black U.S. senator, governor or Cabinet member in statewide elections, a state that shed legalized racial segregation just a generation ago.

Merely cracking double-digits in early opinion polling "will be enough for me," say Logan, determined to run. "But more importantly is how people respond to me when I go out and talk to them, in terms of people’s willingness to accept someone who is my profile."

Logan already has recruited a professional campaign manager. But his first hurdle, as he courts political fund-raisers this month, is overcoming a perception that he is nothing more than a spoiler who will only steal votes from the Democratic nominee—to the clear advantage of the Republican contender for retiring Sen. Connie Mack’s seat in 2000.

Listen to Tom Slade. The former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida stands ready with a personal check for Logan, "a buddy of mine."

"I think he’d be a hell of a U.S. senator," Slade says. "To state the obvious," Slade adds, "his presence in that race isn’t going to be damaging to the Republicans, so I don’t think there is a whit of disloyalty in my supporting him.

Slade played a leading role in Logan’s dramatic alienation from the Democratic Party. Slade brought Logan aboard his 57-foot cutter-rig motor sailer for a tour of the Bahamas last summer, after Logan was ousted by fellow Democrats in the state House as their leader.

This was a cruise ripe with social irony, aboard a world-class sailboat named Forty More for a slave Slade’s family owned in the 1850s—Slade was "fishing around what to name this new boat we bought. I said, ‘I’ll bet you nobody ever named a boat after Forty More.’"

Logan, a Democratic legislator since 1982, became active in Republican Jeb Bush’s campaign for governor last year—one of a few black legislators to endorse Bush. This spring, Logan was one of a few Democratic legislators voting for Bush’s controversial plan to offer children in "failing" public schools state-paid tuition for private schooling.

"I am a Democrat," Logan maintains, "But more importantly, I am a Floridian and an American. . . . I want to be the architect of a new political structure in Florida—elections won and lost on the power of ideas.

Win or lose, Slade cherishes the turmoil Logan’s independent candidacy will cause for the likely Democratic nominee, Insurance Commissioner Bill Nelson. "If it doesn’t do anything else, it jangles an already jangled set of nerves that Bill Nelson carries around with him," Slade says with a sinister chuckle. "Nelson is like a long-tailed cat in a roomful of rocking chairs."

Nelson, a former congressman from Melbourne who flew in the space shuttle and ran for governor, doesn’t sound nervous; "Willie Logan has been my friend for 12 years, and if he gets into the Senate race it’s not going to change that," says Nelson, averting comment on the impact of Logan’s challenge. "I don’t want to be that pundit. There are plenty.

Florida’s senior senator, Democrat Bob Graham of Miami Lakes, sees scant hope for Logan’s election to the Senate as an independent.

"I’d say it’s not a very good chance," Graham says. "There has not been an independent elected to a statewide office in Florida this century."

There is no question who stands to suffer in a three-way race, Graham agrees: "It would be more disadvantageous to the Democrats than to the Republicans." Graham has offered counsel to Logan: I have encouraged him to run as a Democrat . . . He has stated his intention is to run as an independent—that he would have an appeal to both Democrats and Republicans."

Logan and friends say he has no interest in spoiling any race—that he aims to win. Logan believes he will be able to raise issues in a lackluster contest, the only "liberal" able to speak out about gay rights, freedom of choice for abortion. He needn’t pander to a majority, he figures. All he needs is somewhat more than one third of the vote.

"People who think that he just wants to be a spoiler or has some other agenda just don’t know him that well," says Mike Abrams, a former legislator from North Miami Beach in charge of the exploratory bid. "If I thought that was the case, I wouldn’t be involved."

Friends for 20 years, Abrams wrote a check for Logan when he ran for mayor of Opa-locka in 1980—elected at the age of 23. Logan was 25 when he moved up to the state House.

"He has made a greater effort [than others] to socially cross ethnic lines," Abrams says. "as a black man in Florida who has done all these things, he has earned the right to serious consideration. If he isn’t—as a black man—qualified, who is?"

Logan’s challenge, Abrams concedes, is "to cross over to being a credible candidate from being a spoiler—and that’s not my word. That’s the Democrats’ word." This includes "credible, broad-based fund-raising."

As he reaches out, Logan’s fund-raising is under way in Tampa, Jacksonville and downtown Coral Gables. He mingled with a dozen-some supporters—and collected about $15,000—in the penthouse suite of the Cornerstone Group, on Ponce de Leon Boulevard, on Thursday evening.

Cornerstone partners Stuart Meyers and Jorge Lopez are active in the development of affordable housing with the help of federal tax credits. Logan works with them. He founded the Opa-locka Community Development Corp. in 1980 and is president. The CDC claims credit for building more than 1,000 units of affordable housing, and rehabilitating many buildings.

Co-hosts for this fund-raiser: Abrams and super-lobbyist Ron Book. "I actually think Willie will do fairly well raising money," Abrams says.

Logan is even seeking money on the Internet, at a home page that tells his life story and political ambitions: www.logan2000.org

This is ironic for a Democrat cast off by fellow House members last year complaining he devoted too little time to raising money for them.

"I am aware . . . that it will be a huge undertaking," Logan says of his campaign. "I will only decide to do this if I think I can win . . . It will be an all-out effort to win."