After Terri

The echoes of the Terri Schiavo case are still being heard here in Florida. Michael Schiavo is fighting back against the politicians in Florida who exploited his wife for their own political gain, and doing a little politicking of his own.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — The curtains are still drawn tight at Michael Schiavo’s home on a quiet cul-de-sac here, and in some ways he remains as private and unknowable as when his wife Terri was the focus of a fervent national debate last year about life and death.

Yet Mr. Schiavo, who won a scorching legal battle to remove his brain-damaged wife’s feeding tube, also remains furious at lawmakers in Tallahassee and Washington who intervened in the case. Hence the creation last winter of TerriPAC, a federal political action committee aimed against politicians who tried to stop Ms. Schiavo’s death, and the debut of Mr. Schiavo, a newly remarried, self-described normal guy, as a political weapon in this year’s midterm elections.

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Mr. Schiavo’s PAC has made no direct solicitations, but it has raised more than $26,000 in eight months, mostly in contributions of $100 or less made through its Web site, www.terripac.com. The committee is nearly broke at the moment, having contributed a total $4,000 to five Democratic candidates in Florida, Colorado and Texas and spent most of the rest on travel, Web site design and production of a video to help with fund-raising down the road.

“We are not a big financially powerful PAC yet,” said Derek Newton, a Democratic consultant in Miami who sold Mr. Schiavo on the PAC and now serves as its director. “We are just looking at what makes sense and how we can do it.”

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Mr. Schiavo, who switched his voter registration to Democrat from Republican last year, said people had asked him repeatedly to run for office after his wife’s death.

But while the prospect holds allure, he said he was content with a lower-key role for now. He married Jodi Centonze, whom he met and started dating three years after Ms. Schiavo’s collapse, in January. He works three 12-hour shifts a week as a nursing supervisor at the Pinellas County Jail and helps raise his children, Olivia, 3, and Nicholas, 2.

“Maybe down the road,” he said of becoming a political candidate. “Maybe when everybody understands and everything is fixed.”