Why are some Florida Democrats depressed that Gov. Charlie Crist is almost certainly going to run for US Senate? Don’t they understand that such a scenario would be the best of all possible worlds for the party?
Let’s skip the senate seat for a minute and look at what else will happen.
The race for governor will be WIDE open. The Democrats have two WONDERFUL candidates, Alex Sink and Pam Iorio. One will be the new governor, one will be the CFO. Whichever way it falls, we got those two seats.
Bill McCollum will forget the AG job and try (unsuccessfully) for governor. This will open up that race. Hey, Dave Aronberg, the REAL darling of the netroots, is a shoe-in. Another one for the Dems.
Then there’s the Ag Commissioner, another open seat! Adam Putnam thinks he’s going to waltz in, but he’s been in congress long enough to get tainted by everything from Tom Delay to voting against the stimulus. The weight of all that baggage will definitely sink him, the same way it did Tom Feeney and Ric Keller in 2008.
If the Dems can get a solid candidate like Manny Diaz to go for the spot, that’s another pick-up.
So, that brings us back to the US Senate seat.
Crist’s entry should freeze any further entrants on either side. All the murmurs about Iorio jumping in will be diverted elsewhere. And no congressman is going to give up a safe seat just to lose to Governor Suntan.
So that means it will be up to the two south Florida "lightweights" and an "also ran" to carry the water. I know there have been murmurs that St. Sen. Dan Gelber will drop out if his friend Charlie gets in, but we might want to think about that a bit.
Because of the "Crist for VEEP" law he doesn’t have to give up his seat to run. His campaign is a low-cost internet model. He’s smart enough to know that staying in will give him valuable experience and build name recognition for later races even if he loses. I think that adds up to him staying in.
I don’t know if we can say the same about former North Miami Beach Mayor Kevin Burns. Let’s assume he drops out early (sort of like John Edwards did in the Democratic Presidential Primary).
There were a lot of new lessons from the election cycle of 2008. One of them was that a long primary between two relatively equal opponents can actually be useful in two ways. First, it builds the party because of all the grassroots efforts on each side to gain support.
Second, it actually makes the eventual winner stronger because of the experience gained countering all the attacks made and any negatives come out and are dealt with early, when only political junkies are paying attention.
As long as there are no major character collapses (a la Elliot Spitzer) then the primary winner will actually find the general election tame and (short!) in comparison.
But how can anyone counter Gov. Crist’s enormous popularity ratings?
As I’ve pointed out before, everyone needs to go back and check Papa Bush’s polls after the First Gulf War. They were huge. And what happened in 1992? He lost to Bill Clinton. Why? The economy!
Look, as soon as Crist announces that he’s ducking out of his job, his popularity will begin to fall. A LOT can happen over the next two years.
And, as I’ve been harping on for the past three months, if the Democrats run a united SLATE of candidates which campaigns together under the banner of Taking Back Democracy from the lobbyists and an unresponsive legislature, they will sweep the field in 2010.
With Crist getting in the US Senate race, the party is sitting on top of the world!