Hardcore conservatives have to be mad enough to choke a dog at the way Republican Charlie Crist governs: an awful lot like a progres-sive would. First, the governor’s property tax reform proposal was softer than the House’s, which called for a drastic paring back of government in Florida. Then he ordered an end to electronic voting and called for (gasp!) paper ballots. Finally, he held an environ-mental summit in Miami, convinced California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to attend and drew national attention by calling for stricter changes to Florida environmental policies to forestall global warming: tighter pollution limits for power plants; better building codes for efficiency; 20 percent of Florida’s power from renewable resources such as solar and wind. The environmental initiatives prompted one conservative blogger to write on PEER Review: “Today, Florida conservatives met Gov. Hyde.” The rest of Florida, however, seems very happy with Jekyll and Hyde, giving both approval ratings in the ’70s. No wonder Time magazine headlined its story about Crist “Undoing Jeb Bush in Florida.”
This article appears in Best of The Bay 2007.
