Gov. Charlie Crist will announce his political plans on Tuesday and it very likely means he’s running for U.S. Senate, Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer said tonight.
“Charlie Crist is going to be the next U.S. senator from Florida,” Greer told the Buzz a few minutes ago. Crist has said he would make a decision after the legislative session but the precise day was first reported this evening by The Associated Press. […]
Greer strongly indicated Crist will run for the seat being vacated by U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez. “It’s my opinion he has come to the conclusion that he needs to fight for Floridians on the issues coming out of Washington, D.C., and he needs to be there first-hand,” Greer said.
If Crist does indeed go for the Senate seat, as it seems likely, the ripple effect in Florida politics will be massive — and one that could give Democrats a decent shot at picking up a pair of open statewide seats (Governor and AG). Also worth watching will be the response of former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio, who has already declared his candidacy for the Senate seat as the true conservative option in the GOP primary. Will Rubio follow through with the scorched-earth campaign necessary to have a shot at poisoning the well for Crist? Or will he bail in order to run for one of the aforementioned open statewide offices, instead?
UPDATE: A “source close to the governor” tells the Politico that Crist has decided to run for Senate.
Bad news. I hope Sink quickly gets in for GOV.
Will Meek stay in? Gelber obviously will.
This is the only top-tier recruit he’s had so far in this cycle. I hope Rubio stays in just to torpedo Crist for the general electorate. Are there any more recent polls of the race?
effectively outs several closeted conservative gay politicians.
Charlie Crist and Larry ‘Wide-stance’ Craig got the most minutes on screen I’d estimate, out of the several current and former politicians covered.
If Marco Rubio does do a scorched-earth campaign, and if he picks this as one of his topics, the campaign will be very tough for Crist (as long as he remains in the closet. But is there anyway Crist could win the Repub primary if he does come out?)
Outrage opened in LA , NY and I believe DC this weekend, and expands in the coming weeks (including FL).
http://www.outragethemovie.com/
Didn’t look like we were going to get this seat anyways. Hopefully we can pick up the governorship at least.
Wait until Crist is out of the running for governor and then make the big announcement.
http://www.heraldtribune.com/a…
I personally think we always had a better chance at taking FL-Gov without Crist than FL-Sen without Crist. This also means that Obama has another Senate Republican he can work with on economic issues. I’m pretty pleased by these developments.
That’d be in 2016.
Presumably he wants to run for president in 2016, which if he can keep a handle on the gay angle, he can probably succeed at (getting the GOP nomination I mean). I’d guess that the Republicans nominate a neanderthal in 2012, lose in a landslide, worse than the Clinton/Dole rout of 96, and then nominate someone sane in 2016 and give us another reasonably close election. Crist could conceivably be that person, again, absent the gay thing.
That’s one hell of a caveat when you’re talking about the presidency though. And if the presidency is off the table, and Crist is forced to run for reelection to the Senate, he’s got a GOP primary in Florida to look forward to. By 2016 the base may have mellowed out, but if his primary and general were in 2014 I’d say he’d be fucked. It wouldn’t be possible to please both a primary and a general electorate at that date, not with Crist’s present political positioning.
So, my question is, in 2016 does Crist try to run for re-election as a Republican, or not? I’d say there’s a non-trivial chance that he won’t be able to win a GOP primary by then. His main saving grace is that that will be seven years from now, which is a damn long time in politics. The landscape will probably look very different by then, cold hard demographics notwithstanding.
I think we have a good chance to win this Senate seat. Crist is weaker than he may appear. He will probably be sorely challenged by Rubio. He may lose, as Specter almost did to Toomey, and in that case we’ll probably pick up the seat. Even if Crist wins, he’ll be bloodied. With a good campaign, we can still win. I don’t know which of the announced or mentioned Democratic candidates would be strongest, but I’m cautiously hopeful about the prospects.
For one, this isn’t too suprising considering what the chatter in Florida was saying in these last few weeks. It is undeniable that Crist is very popular, having 60%+ approval ratings among Democrats, indepedents, and Republicans. He would start out as a strong favorite in both the primary and in the general election. The primary is late (Late August 2010 I think?) so Marco Rubio could potentially damage Crist enough among Republicans that they don’t turn out to vote for Crist in a general election. However I think that this is unlikely unless Jeb Bush is actively and openly supporting Rubio (simply staying out of the primary won’t be enough).
Anyway, as everyone has been saying, Crist wouldn’t be to bad as a Republican: he seems to willing to compromise on economic issues and will probably join the Maine senators as part of the definite moderate wing. On the other hand Democrats now have a chance to get the Florida governorship and create less GOP favored gerrymandered seats for the next decade (althorough be warned that it will still be no more than 50/50 for Democrats to take the governorship)/
is the primary. If he wins the primary, he’ll be in the Senate. But since Florida is a closed primary, there is a chance that Crist may lose the primary.
There are numerous reports that Crist is gay – despite his recent hetero marriage. A Senate campaign would be the time to bring out any photos, if they exist, for maximum national impact. However, I’m not sure if that would lead to a backlash.
Do we have anything that says Sink will now run or is likely to run?
This is why I would rather have Crist run for Gov again. We have no assurances Sink WILL run for Gov and if she doesn’t then both GOV and SEN are most likely lost.
I read over at the GLBT news blog I was read that he supported Prop 2, the gay marriage amendment in Florida in 2008. Is that true? Did he really come out in support of it?
If so, I am all for Rubio outing him and killing his chances in the Senate Primary. I think the voters could have a bigger problem with that then him being gay, period. At least if he had just not said anything about Prop 2 or came out against it, everyone would know why and it’d be expected, now he looks like a tool.
I don’t mind Charlie Crist, but I have to wonder if he won’t take a couple of giant steps to the right.
i could go through the archives and find almost every one on this blog predict with absolute certainty that he would never run for senate in 2010. and now it’s a sure thing.
i think it’s good for many reasons – well if sink runs for gov anyway. meek is running hard and seriously, has a moderate record, and will be there to win if rubio wins or crist stumbles. and we can hope for an nasty internecine battle on the GOP side and alex sink to run a good campaign at the top of the ticket.