Charlie Crist's loss last night to Marco Rubio in the Pinellas County GOP Straw poll was just the latest in a series of straw polls losses held throughout the state in the past year, but it will be tough for the Crist camp to shrug it off, coming as it does on his home turf.
What does it all mean? Well, CL contributor Chris Ingram has his own, decidedly negative take on that, which you can read here.
As former Pinellas County Republican Party Chairman Paul Bedinghaus cautioned to the St. Pete Times however,
"It's dangerous to overemphasize an executive committee of a political party. It's a couple hundred people not necessarily representative of the 219,000 other people (in the county)."
True enough. These straw polls overall represent a small percentage of the people who will vote in August's Primary election, but they are no means out of touch – just the opposite – they can be influential in many ways as a direction to where the local party stands.
The laundry list of issues that explains the disaffection among conservatives with Crist is legion. It also helps that his challenger is charismatic, and extremely doctrinaire when it comes to his positions on the issues.
But the Crist team still has plenty of time to stop the surging tide, and one place they're attempting to do so is positioning Rubio as a hypocrite on the always hot issue of stimulus funding.
As the Times reported on their blog yesterday, the Crist camp is sending out a video showing what they say the former house speaker's contradictory stance on taking those federal funds.
But back to last night's vote in Clearwater. The key paragraph in Adam Smith's story to me is this quote from a Crist supporter:
"It's just a perfect storm in some ways, and certain people want to take advantage of the situation," said Erwin Beck of Clearwater, a Crist supporter. "These tea party people don't really grasp consensus politics."
No, perhaps they don't. That's the double edge sword that the Republican Party faces in dealing with the Tea Baggers. As we reported on yesterday, the state GOP is working on efforts to bring as many of those folks inside the GOP tent. And why not, as they seem to be the most energized voting bloc going in early 2010.
But if you are supporting a pragmatic/moderate/sell-out or however some want to characterize Governor Crist, it can make things unpredictable.
This article appears in Jan 6-12, 2010.