Say what you will about Governor Charles Joseph “Charlie” Crist, Jr, but Democrats and Independents seem to like him a hell of a lot more than Kendrick Meek.
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jibeaux
I’m not in Florida, but isn’t it also true that Meek has run approximately zero ads?
Mumphrey
Oh, well. He’ll be a lot better than Rubio. My guess is that he’d vote more or less like Ben Nelson (D(ickhead)-Neb.), which isn’t great by any stretch, but 50 out of 100 is hell of a lot better than 0 out of 100 (whatever people like Hamsher might say notwithstanding). Also, he’ll be easier to lean on, since I don’t see how he can caucus with anybody but the Democrats, and he won’t have the unspoken threat that Nelson has that he might just leave and join the Republicans if the Democrats aren’t nice enough to him.
Shalimar
I haven’t seen a poll in awhile but from all the Floridians I talk with Crist is still very popular. His problem was that he is despised by the small subgroup that actually votes in Republican primaries.
Poopyman
Huh. Looks like Crist is getting almost all his support from Dems. Buh-bye Mr. Meek.
My uneducated guess is that Crist would join the Dem caucus, especially if he continues to gather Meek supporters. And obviously as long as the Dems control the Senate.
Zach
Is there anything bad about Meek at all? I only became aware of him when he went down to Haiti and was more or less totally awesome. He’s got a solid background in law enforcement and is responsible for a very popular constitutional amendment in Florida. I guess I see the pragmatic case for supporting Crist, but I’d like to see Meek gain some traction.
sparky
if you are inside FL, Crist has never been dead. only looked that way from the national perspective because the media likes to play up the teabagger thing. no way Rubio would ever beat Crist statewide if it’s just the two of them. which at this point is pretty much the case.
is there a more maladroit operation than the FDP? dunno.
The Moar You Know
His orange skin gives me the creeps.
I also suspect that he’s got a list as long as my driveway entitled “payback”, and that it would be worth electing him just to see who he fucks over.
I suspect the GOP is pretty high on that list.
Morbo
@Zach: Only that his name appears to be appropriate for his campaign style.
Tom65
DSCC needs to cut a deal with Crist, ASAP
cmorenc
Yes, we’d love for Florida to elect a true progressive as a Senator.
But given that Crist is not a hard-right ideologue and elected as an independent, would not be obligated to kowtow to the Tea Party crazies, he’s light-years better than Rubio.
A Crist victory would be a net win for the Democrats in the grand scheme of things, even though not the kind of candidate we’d truly prefer.
Ash Can
I’m resigned to the belief that the most that can be asked of the state of Florida is to not send someone to the senate who’s completely fucked in the head. Crist has shown that he can be decent and sensible, and I’d take that over Rubio any day of the week. Furthermore (as Mumphrey indicates above), with the GOP increasingly overrun by true believers and people who really ought to be back home in a halfway house with trained professionals overseeing their medications, Crist could very well have no choice but to caucus with the Dems. Whether or not he ends up being a pain in the ass in that process remains to be seen, but it’s an interesting scenario.
jwb
I think that if it becomes clear that Crist is likely to win this thing, you’ll see the goopers try to sway him back, and where he caucuses will depend a lot on how the election plays out in the Senate and House. If the Dems retain healthy margins, I think he’ll join the Dems, but if the goopers make it close and seem well positioned for 2012, I think you’ll see him caucus with the goopers.
Zifnab
If we’re lucky, Crist will go full Specter and line up with the Democrats whole-heartedly. If we’re not, he’ll be another Lieberman in the caucus.
Either way, he’ll be a far cry from the “No on Everything” Republican Senate drones. I’d prefer Meeks, but I’ll happily settle for Crist, given that he’s replacing a full blown Republican Senator anyway.
Also, sticking it to the Tea Baggers is always fun.
MikeJ
@Tom65: But probably not out loud.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
This whole “Crist will probably caucus with the Dems” is good…how? Lieberman does that and we all know how well that’s worked out.
Randy P
As a data geek, I love studying tables and graphs and looking for stories in them. In this one there is an unusually clear narrative, but I don’t know what it means: From Mar 15 to Apr 15, he peeled off a bunch of Republicans, but the remainder have stuck with Rubio. Few Democrats shifted in that period. From Apr 15 to now, he started peeling away Meek supporters at a huge rate, and we haven’t found the bottom of Meek’s support yet.
SGEW
But didn’t Crist teach us that “blessed are the Meek (supporters)”?
jwb
@Tom65: That’s what the smart play would be, if they can pull it off without alienating the progressives or alarming the not-crazy Republicans. It’s actually a fairly delicate task.
frankdawg
Crist on a kangaroo!
Meeks is unpopular in FL because he is a Democrat. They have bought the whole “all Dems are tax-and-spend” bullshit to the point where had Crist run as a Dem he would be doing worse than as an independent.
I saw it when I lived there, criminal, incompetent, functionally illiterate didn’t matter as long as you were not a D.
They’re simple people of the common clay, you know . . . morons.
Kevin
Best blog post title ever! LOL
frankdawg
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Well, for one thing Crist won’t be given a committee chair he does not deserve!
Someone needs to ask Reed if Lieberman is still with us on everything but the war BTW.
Poopyman
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Lieberman is out to fuck the Dems since Lamont won his primary. Crist will be out to fuck the Rebs, and I hope he’s got an Irish temperament to do it with.
(I’m 7/8ths Irish, so I know from experience that would be enjoyable to watch.)
Gatsby
Looks like Crist has a solid lead on Rubio, too!
cleek
@Randy P:
the Orlando Sentinel had this to say on March 25th:
so, people figured out who he was and decided they didn’t like him so much after all.
Ash Can
@Randy P: My wild-ass guess on this is that around mid-April, the scuttlebutt really started heating up that Crist would announce as independent, so all the moderates who were supporting Meek as the only alternative to Rubio went back to declaring for Crist since it appeared that he’d be in the race after all. Especially if Meek isn’t exactly running a dynamic campaign at this point, I could easily see this happening.
Chris G.
“I also suspect that he’s got a list as long as my driveway entitled “payback”, and that it would be worth electing him just to see who he fucks over.”
This.
Dave Ruddell
If we’re calling him ‘Governor Charles Joseph “Charlie” Crist, Jr’, does that mean we should be referring to Marco Antonio “Ned Lamont” Rubio ?
Violet
There was an article in yesterday’s WSJ about this. Apparently Meek was a big supporter of Hillary Clinton, so his relationship with Obama isn’t as strong as it could be. And Crist was a supporter of the bailout money, or something, so he has a better relationship with Obama than you’d suspect.
The article discussed how the Meek and Crist situation was a potential challenge for the WH in choosing who to support and how strongly, etc. I read/skimmed it at the gym, and can’t seem to find it online, so don’t recall if it was a concern troll type article or not.
hal
Wonkette always referred to him as Orange Whore Charlie Crist.
mistersnrub
This is going to be an epic defeat for the Teabaggers. I can’t wait to see the cognitive dissonance writ large once Crist wins this thing.
aimai
As for Crist being a second Lieberman–I’m not local so I don’t have any insider knowledge but Crist just doesn’t strike me as either as spiteful or as ideologically bankrupt as Lieberman. Lieberman turned bitter and sour on the Democrats as a party, and on liberalism. If Crist comes halfway over and caucuses with the dems the better model Specter/technocratic type guy going for “whatever works” and working with the majority party. Wonder how long before he burns all bridges and makes the Duke of Winsor Speech “I can no longer go on without the Man I Love?”
aimai
PaulW
@jibeaux:
There’s been a few radio ads I think for Meek. There’s mostly been an online fundraising effort I keep getting emails for (you give 50 bucks to Obama in 2008 and you get swamped with emails ever after: I had the same problem with McCain after 2000… )
The interesting thing on that graph is how Meek’s numbers slide down worse than Rubio’s: Crist is pulling more Dem voters than GOP. I would have thought the Dems would get more aggressive and try to gather their voters together, forcing Rubio and Crist to fight each other over the moderate votes that “lean Republican”. When you consider that the Democrats currently have a 700,000 voter registration advantage in the state (!) they’d be using this opportunity to improve their polling: instead they haven’t.
If Meek is still under 20 percent by the end of June, the Democrats need to start meeting with Crist’s people to see if he’ll caucus with them if he wins.
Xenos
@aimai: My understanding is that the man whose love Crist can not live without is himself. Is there a history of a long-term partner for him that I don’t know about? Aside from his poor wife, of course.
Egilsson
Well, HCR passed with 60 votes (not one vote to spare) and Lieberman was one of those 60 votes.
Don’t get me wrong, I can’t stand him and I’m itching to donate to whoever the democrats nominate against him, but I’ll take that 60th vote over a nut like Rubio anyday.
Meeks seems like a kid who got a leg up because his mom was a representative. I’m not feeling the magic at all, although I’d certainly prefer his votes to Crist’s undoubtedly.
DougJ
If he caucuses with Dems, it’s all good.
The Moar You Know
@Xenos: The
beardwife is a recent acquisition. I guess you have not heard the rumors.PaulW
I’m from Florida so let me say a few things:
1) Crist’s veto of the “Death to Tenure” anti-education bill was very popular across the state… outside of the Jeb Bush and anti-teachers-union crowd. One of the reasons why Crist’s numbers went up like that on the chart.
2) Crist is a rather average politician: he rules more towards consensus rather than by ideology. It’s why the wingnuts aren’t enamored of him.
3) He’s a Floridian, which automatically means he’s crazy. But he’s not stupid either. He openly accepted the stimulus package in 2009 because Florida seriously needed it, and a majority of voters – outside of the far right, natch – backed it (if anything, the Floridians I’ve talked to are still worried we didn’t get enough stimulus to fix our unemployment problems). It doesn’t hurt that Obama is still reasonably popular in Florida (consistently about 3-5 points above the national average, which currently puts it in the 51 percent approval). Now that Crist doesn’t have to answer in the GOP primary for hugging Obama, it’s a non-issue.
4) A big reason why the Democrats and Independents like Crist is that he made genuine efforts as governor to reform certain political practices – such as ending voter log purges – that went over well with the Black and Hispanic populations.
5) Crist’s biggest advantage over Meek is that Crist is the marquee name: everyone in state knows him from his gubernatorial career, that his backing aided McCain in winning Florida in 2008, a possible Vice Presidential pick (in hindsight, don’t you wish McCain chose him over Palin?). And voters have a pretty good idea of what Crist will do as a Senator (play golf with lobbyists, obstruct federal investigations, vote in favor of flag-burning bans, the usual).
Meek is a Congressman from South Florida out of 25 other Congresscritters, and few statewide voters know him. Rubio’s got the advantage of having the national teabagger wingnut crowd (and FOX Not-News) backing him: Meek’s really not getting any love at all from the national media. Where’s his invites to the Rachel Maddow show, eh?
Any questions?
MaximusNYC
Perhaps one reason for — or just one sign of? — Meek’s lack of support among Dems is that most of them don’t even seem to be able to get his name right.
It’s Kendrick MEEK. Not “Meeks”.
Betty Cracker
@frankdawg:
What you say is true of parts of Florida, but not the whole state. Obama carried FL in 2008, and Blue Dog Bill Nelson gets reelected regularly, so it’s not like Dems can’t win here.
Meek is doing poorly because he’s running a shitty campaign and is largely unknown outside South Florida. He’s the default nominee because no FL Dems with a statewide standing wanted to run against the fairly popular Crist, whom they assumed would win the GOP nomination.
I don’t know how this will shake out, but I think it’s a very real possibility that Meek will run enough of a campaign so that he and Crist will split the non-crazy vote, but not enough to prevail over teabagger Rubio.
That would totally suck. Whatever the Dems have to do to prevent that scenario — back Meek to the hilt, cut a deal with Crist, whatever — they need to do it. We don’t need another Jim DeMint in the Senate.
geg6
From my long distance vantage point (but with friends in the West Palm area with whom I speak at least once a week), Crist is popular with both Dems and independents and it’s not a matter of party. He may very likely have won in the general among Dems even if he had won the GOP nomination.
West Palm is a pretty Dem area, but Crist is super popular, my friends say. They are simply dismayed by how he’s been treated by the teabaggers.
Bob L
So the real question is; how is Crist poll number proof that the teabaggers are a force to be recon with it in American politics and it proves America is a hard right nation? Sure to us unwashed peasants it looks like the message here is you are a conservative who wants to get elected show you are open to reason, ditch the GOP and get the teabaggers to turn on you. But I am unwashed peasant so it goes without saying I am utterly wrong so I await punditry to tell me why.
mistersnrub
Crist will caucus with the Dems. The GOP, including sad, old McCain, totally put the shiv in his back – he will remember it and he will be just as spiteful as Holy Joe.
Stan of the Sawgrass
Too bad about Kendrick Meek. He’s my Congressman, and as a legislator, he is indeed awesome. I’ve never met a more competent legislator, period. But he’s not a flashy guy, and being able to calmly lay out all the provisions of the AFA to a crowd is not going to make a good sound bite. It’s a damn shame, for sure.
That said, Crist isn’t a bad compromise, considering. Also, he’s likely to feel burned by the right-wing in the Senate, so he may not fall into lock step with the Repubs on cloture votes, even though he’s probably going to caucus with them. He hasn’t been a bad Gov., but he got caught by having to clean up after a Bush (made him simpatico with Obama, I betcha). In better times, he might have been a great one.
Ash Can
@PaulW:
Not really. I’d bet that a goodly number of plain-vanilla-white voters were reassured about casting a vote for a black guy for president by the fact that the alternative was even scarier.
anonymous
Crist will never forgive the GOP for picking Palin over him in 2008 and Rubio over him in 2010. I am rooting for him to slam the shiv into the GOP this November for the lulz.
Xenos
@The Moar You Know: The rumours, or just plain talk, is that he is gay… big deal, nothing new. What I have not been able to find out (not that a great deal of effort has gone into it) is whether he has had long-term gay relationships.
Maybe I am get lost in the ethical maze of this sort of business, but I can hardly think poorly of him for getting a wife if his sex life is all brief, casual encounters with various other men. Whether straight or gay, if that is what you need, then getting married is a matter of being honest to your partner, and this is all nobody else’s business.
If he has a long-term partner, someone he truly loves, then getting married to a woman is a pretty shitty thing to do to both wife and lover, and shows a dangerous proclivity towards fooling himself and others that will get him in trouble.
ksmiami
As a floridian, Crist is genuinely a good guy and about as good as it gets in terms of professional politician. He has done a lot for the state and Rubio sucks to anyone not loco derecho Cubano and not insane. There is just no comparison to Crist for the office, period.
also, the blue hairs in Palm Beach adore him
Phyllis
I totally read that headline as “Christ resurrected from the dead” which had me saying ‘Easter was two months….nevermind’.
fucen tarmal
for everyone who complains about the two party system, the election in the united kingdom, and many of our recent special elections show, if the bar gets lowered much under a 40% plurality, we are capable of electing anyone anywhere.
even voting for the lesser of two evils assures some standard.
Tractarian
@Kevin:
Oh, I don’t know. “Crist is Risen” would have sufficed.
Will
When Meek announced first announced his candidacy in the wayback, I knew it was doomed. Only in the most promising of electoral climates could an African-American Dem win statewide in Florida.
The state is Deep South with a heavy but not countervailing offset of liberal Dem transplant. That, along with a collapsed economy, along with lackluster Meeks campaigning, along with some Latino pride that could swing Rubio’s way, meant all along that the best hope for Dems is what exactly has transpired: the GOP opted for a purity ritual instead of a guaranteed GOP Crist seat. By pushing him out of their party, they’ve most likely guaranteed an Independent Crist seat that will have no love left for his former righty brethren.
Joel
Kendrick Meek sounds like a nice guy and all, but he was running a quixotic campaign to begin with. That means zero name recognition, a miniscule war chest, and a palooka’s chance at the title. Democrats are just making a cold, hard, calculation here.
Joel
Kendrick Meek sounds like a nice guy and all, but he was running a quixotic campaign to begin with. That means zero name recognition, a miniscule war chest, and a palooka’s chance at the title. Democrats are just making a cold, hard, calculation here.
feebog
Sorry, but the Florida situation is all too similar to what is happening in Hawaii right now. Two Dems duking it out and letting the Republican eke out a win. Meek is not going to drop out, and once he starts running ads he is going to regain a lot of those Dem votes. I see Rubio winning this one by a couple of points over Crist and about six over meek.
Alex S.
I don’t know if that’s still possible, but Meek should endorse Crist and drop out to keep his House seat. Crist will never caucus with the Republicans. Ideologically he’ll be similar to Bill Nelson, who isn’t that bad, actually. The Dems need to fight dirty this year, and the FloridaGOP has served them a golden opportunity.
tony
Crist will not caucus with the Democrats. He’s not the moderate the media and most of the left wing blogs paint him to be. Crist has been and always will be a far right conservative who occasionally make a politically calculated move to fool people who do not pay attention. He’s an orange skinned John McCain.
cybrestrike
@frankdawg:
This.
I live down here and if you’re a Dem, good luck, unless you live in the I-4 Coridoor, West Palm Beach, Miami (save Little Havana), Jacksonville, or Tampa/St. Pete. Outside of the cities, this state is basically Southern Georgia.
I like Meek, but he’s not running ads yet. At least not in Orlando. It’s early, but it’s not looking good.
Florida is a purple state, and enough suckers here love Crist’s ersatz independence that they’ll vote for him, even though he screwed up the state pretty good before the Teabaggers ran him out of the party.
He’ll probably win at this point, and he’ll probably run with the Democratic Caucus and be competing with the Lieberscumbag/Bayh/Nelson/Baucus/Lincoln/Nelson/Landreiu cabal for centrist/corporatist senate attention seeker.
PaulW
Crist might have to caucus with the Dems anyway: the GOP purity purge is such that the Senate leadership won’t be able to accept someone the teabaggers despise.
Crist *can* caucus with the Democrats and still retain an independent streak where he wouldn’t have to vote lock-step with every Dem proposal (same as Lieberman). He won’t get that with the current Republican leadership. And if the Democrats retain control of the Senate (which is likely), the Democrats can offer a juicy subcommittee or spots on key committees that would give Crist incentive to caucus with them.
Dr. J
As a FL democratic voter, I see this as a true dilemma: remain pure and vote for the true Democrat, or vote for the person most likely to defeat the truly bad candidate. I have not seen any ads (other than a very few bumper stickers) for Meek. I would suspect that it would have been smart for them to wait until they knew who they were running against, hoping it would be Rubio. But now to run against Rubio and Crist–that is a real challenge for campaign strategy. I will be working for the Grayson campaign, so I will be getting a lot more inside information before I make up my mind.
Parrotlover77
Whether Crist will be a Liberman or Specter is irrelevant. The Dems in Florida realize that Rubio is a batshit insane teatard. They are gambling on the fact that no matter how rightward Crist goes, he will never be as bad as Rubio. This is probably a smart decision because, for some reason, Florida’s Democrat Party has been in the toilet for a long time now. I don’t know what the hell is wrong with them (the immigration issue alone should be a clear winner in every race), but right now they suck.
If I still lived in Florida, I’d have a hard time voting for Meek without the safety net of something like instant-runoff voting, even if I agreed with him on every issue. (Disclosure: I know absolutely nothing about Meek other than he exists. He might be a great person or the Dem’s Sarah Palin — I don’t know either way.)
eric k
I expect Crist to Caucus with the Dems and probably be more like Specter than Lieberman or Nelson.
Chris G.
@Bob L: The teabaggers seem to have this weird emerging dynamic where they can only muster enough strength to affect nominations in places that already send very conservative people to Congress in the first place. So they can stop Bennett in Utah but not, say, Kirk in IL (and presumably Castle in DE). What’s very sad about that is that the places teabaggers are strongest are likely to be the places with the fewest viable Democrats to take advantage of the openings such situations present.
nanute
I’m relieved. I thought the headline said Christ resurrected. And I thought: Oh no. Not again!
mai naem
First, isn’t there some multi-millionaire who just announced he’s runnning against Meek? Greenberg of some name like that? Second, how long before the Charlie Crist is gay scandal with some guy he had a one night stand years ago or whatever? The repubs might have hidded it while he was a Repub but now that he’s an indy I think there will be a scandal. I certainly hope he’s as nasty and bitter as Lieberprick. About time, their side had a Lieberprick.
stan
Meek’s problem is that he’s liberal, from Miami, and black. One of these things is usually an impediment for winning statewide office in Florida but the combination of all three is fatal. From the days of Robert King High(former 50/60’s Miami Mayor) liberals from Miami have been repeatedly shafted(see also 1950 Senate primary between Claude Pepper and George Smathers). Crist is going to get a lion share of the moderate/independents who live in the I-4 corridor, a healthy chunk of the Broward/Palm Beach condo commandos, and probably even splitting the Dade anti Rubio vote. Not sure if that’ll be enough for Crist to win, but it’ll sure be enough for Meek to lose and badly(not break mid 20’s in a three way race).
contract3D
best democratic governor since Laughton Chiles
(sorry for y’all too young to get the reference)
Crist has, since day one, proven himself a true believer in (smalll-d) democracy. He worked to fix the infamous Florida voting machine sitch, and to repeal the Jim-Crow-era FL felon-disenfranchisement laws.
No wonder the Tea Baggers are howling for his blood! I voted for (and indeed worked for) Jim Davis, his Democratic opponent, in the Governor’s race.
But I’ll be voting/volunteering for Crist (and implicitly for Rebubllican sanity) this time around…
NotReallyHere
There’s a lot of campaigning left to do, so a lot can happen. But I think Rubio is going to realize he has a problem. He got the teabaggers so whipped up by his extremist positions when he was running to the right in the primaries, he risks disappointing and alienating them early if he tries to move to the middle (as when he said he disapproved of Arizona’s illegal immigration law). He’s locked into the low thirties from the polling so far, but can’t go far either way without losing supporters. Crist and Meek have a lot more room to jockey around. Meek will want to solidify his Democratic support and move as much to the center as he can, while Crist has a wide-open range of options; he can make a show of independence with moves like vetoing the screw-the-teachers bill and jump to Meek’s left on various issues without ceding the general center at all.
Right at the moment, I would say that Crist is in the driver’s seat, but if he makes a serious misstep then he doesn’t have the supporting net to give him a chance at a rebound that Meek or Rubio might enjoy. Oddly enough, I think Rubio’s best chance is to try to take down Crist entirely and make it a pure partisan battle, and rely on his own energized base to turn out in force. If it’s a three-way fight at the end, and Rubio can’t break the 33% barrier, he can’t win… and if it comes down to Crist against Rubio with Meek sidelined at the end, then Crist still has the better shot. For that matter, if it comes down to Meek versus Crist with Rubio consigned to the under-20 range, then Meek is probably in trouble too. I wouldn’t be too surprised to see Meek and Rubio both pile on Crist… or to see Crist then turn that around as a display of his independence from ‘both extremes.’
joe from Lowell
You weren’t going to win anyway, Kenrick, but you can play pinata with the teabagger, get Crist to caucus with the Dems, and make yourself a hero to activists across the country.