The annual race drew 20,000 participants - breast-cancer survivors, their loved ones, colleagues, and friends. To the extent that anyone took time to talk of that other race, health was the lens through which they viewed it.
Among them was one influential Republican - Nancy Brinker, who founded the national Komen charity in 1982 to honor her sister's memory. To date, it has raised $2 billion for research and community-outreach programs. Brinker has donated generously to the GOP and its candidates for years. But many participants in Saturday's race differed with her politically.
"You won't find many Republicans here because of the problem with preexisting conditions," said Debbie Jaffe, who was diagnosed with breast cancer three years ago. Last year, she said, when a mobile-phone company laid her off, she lost her health coverage - and, because of her cancer, could not find an insurer willing to write her a policy. President Obama's health-care law, she said, will make it illegal to deny coverage to people like her.
Republican women who did speak up seemed focused on using free-market principles to spur the economy, upholding conservative religious beliefs, or just plain evicting the current White House occupant.
"I have a lot of friends who say they are in the ABO party," said Karen List, a 12-year cancer survivor. "That's 'Anybody But Obama.' "
The most recent Quinnipiac University poll shows Florida's Republican women favoring Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, over Gingrich, the former House speaker, 40 percent to 30 percent. Libertarian Ron Paul was in third place among GOP women, and slightly ahead of Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator.
