Last week's declaration of independence by Florida Governor Charlie Crist has made the Sunshine State once again ground zero for political excitement.
Crist's decision to bolt the GOP, which evolved over the course of a few months after polls began showing former House Speaker Marco Rubio dominating the Republican U.S. Senate primary, is obviously the only way that the governor has any chance of achieving his dream of moving to Washington next year.
But it's an unquestionably risky move, with the downside being that his political career might be over at the age of 54 if he loses in November.
To go forward without the infrastructure of a party apparatus, Crist has to rely more than ever on "the people," the amorphous category of Floridians he has invoked like a mantra to explain his motivation for going the independent route. But who are those "people" going to be? And can they form a plurality in a three-way contest?
Democratic party strategist Steve Schale thinks if any Florida politician can crack the code and eke out an independent win, it would be Charlie Crist.
"If it were someone like Pam Iorio or Rick Baker, it'd be laughable," he says of a candidate in Florida trying to win a statewide seat outside of party support. "But because he has a 20-year brand as being post-partisan, I think he might be the exception."
And Schale (who is supporting Kendrick Meek for Senate) says that Crist fits the mold of other politicians Florida voters have supported — moderates (think Bob Graham, Mel Martinez, Bill Nelson) and big personalities (Jeb Bush, Lawton Chiles). "And he starts with instant name recognition."
The conventional wisdom is that a three-man race elevates the leading Democrat in the race, Kendrick Meek. But there are detractors to that theory.
Tom Jensen with the Public Policy Institute wrote last week that more Democrats surveyed by his firm have a favorable opinion of Crist (45 percent) than they do of Meek (29 percent). And then there's Crist's endorsement from the 140,000 members of the Florida Education Association, a usually monolithic Democratic bloc whose hearts he won (at least momentarily) by vetoing the education reform Senate Bill 6 last month.
But that endorsement doesn't necessarily translate into votes. Among the people carrying signs at last Thursday's rally (which attracted a modest audience of approximately 250) was a quartet of Largo elementary school teachers, three of them Democrats. None of the Dems was willing to commit to Crist or Meek.
Brandt Robinson held a sign thanking the governor for vetoing Senate Bill 6. The lifelong Democrat says he's never supported a Republican, but attended the rally because he admired how Crist handled himself in the weeks leading up to that veto. "This is about modeling that it's important to listen to people, to collaborate with them… I think Governor Crist can lead the nation away from this temptation to just gravitate towards quick fixes and sound bites."
Another teacher and self-described lifelong Democrat, Carol Robinson, said it was too early for her to decide on a candidate, while teacher Julie Clark, also a Democrat, said she knew virtually nothing about Kendrick Meek. (The lone Republican teacher of the group said she has always voted for Crist and will do so in November.)
Clark's comment about Meek was by no means an isolated one. Ostensibly because he's been shut out by the media as the Crist-Rubio saga has unfolded, the 43-year-old U.S. Representative from Miami is still a relative unknown outside of South Florida, and (like Rubio) has never run for state office before.
In the most recent Quinnipiac University poll released on April 15, a whopping 73 percent of Floridians surveyed said they hadn't heard enough about him. That's compared with 41 percent who said they hadn't heard enough about Rubio, and 15 percent for Crist. And the numbers for Meek haven't changed much in the last half year, as a similar poll back in October showed 71 percent had not heard enough about him.
In discussions with rank-and-file Democrats, the assertion that "Meek can't win " is frequently invoked, though often with little substantive proof.
University of Central Florida Political Science Professor Aubrey Jewett says he's not certain why that attitude has taken hold, saying that Meek is a bright legislator with a respectable record.
Meek does come up short in the charisma department, Jewett acknowledges, especially compared to Rubio and Crist. But even though it's an important component, it's by no means definitive. As an example, he points to Attorney General Bill McCollum, currently the front-runner for governor.
"It took McCollum three tries to win statewide," Jewett says. "He's a serious guy and didn't fail his bar exam," a reference to the fact that it took Crist three tries to pass the Florida Bar.
Charisma has certainly helped propel Marco Rubio's explosive breakthrough in the past year. That, plus the surge of Tea Party-fueled anger, can make it appear that the stars have already aligned for the former House Speaker. "You could argue that Rubio is the right candidate for the right time," says Jewett. The surge in Republican enthusiasm, combined with a depressed Democratic base and the fact that the party out of favor historically wins back a number of Congressional seats, are other factors that suggest a three-way race could favor Rubio, Jewett added.
GOP political consultant Chris Ingram predicts that Crist will win out. He says that, although Rubio is a "great communicator when feeding red meat to conservative audiences, he lacks the gravitas that makes one think, 'I'd like to sit down and have a beer with this guy.'"
Jarvis El-Amin, a black community activist in Tampa who is supporting Governor Crist in the race, says some in the African-American community still resent Meek for supporting Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the intense Democratic primary in 2008. "In the African-American community, [not supporting] the first black president? How are you going to be forgiven for that?"
Crist advisors think they can cut into some of Meek's black Democratic support, referencing the fact Crist got over 18 percent of the black vote in beating Jim Davis for governor in 2006, an extremely good result for a Republican.
But in an interview with CL, Meek laughed at the idea that Crist would do that well with the black vote against him. "Crist wasn't running against me in '06. So, that's where it is. I feel what he faced last time and what he will face this time are two different things."
Meek stressed he wasn't concerned that he trails both Republicans in three-way match-ups, saying that the two "have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars going after each other on TV and radio — we haven't even taken a 15-second ad out."
Certainly the base of independent voters alone can't carry Crist to the promised land. Today there are over 2.5 million such identified voters — that's only about 20 percent of the electorate.
And what of Marco Rubio? After getting the Tea Party hard-right base excited, can he pivot gracefully from winning the GOP primary to winning the general election?
Last week on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace asked him that exact question. Rubio's response? "Conservative thought is the mainstream of America."
Another nugget was added to the three-way race late last week. Billionaire real estate tycoon Jeff Greene has filed to run against Meek in the Democratic primary. Greene reportedly made his billions by buying credit default swaps that rose in value as subprime mortgages fell. Meek has been dismissive in some of his comments, but admitted to CL that "it's going to be a big challenge because he has a big checkbook and he can write his own check, and for him to spend money in this race is like me saying, 'Can I buy you lunch?'"
The good news is that there is nearly half a year left for voters to decide.
This article appears in May 5-11, 2010.