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Special Report
The Murky Florida Three-Way
The last name Florida Republicans need in the news-cycle right now is Jim Greer.
TAMPA — With hope and change along with our rookie president’s popularity tanking hereabouts, with Floridians self-identifying conservative over liberal by two to one, and with political enthusiasm much higher among Florida Republicans than Democrats, it would be very difficult for Florida Democrats to beat conservative Republican Marco Rubio Nov. 2 for an open U.S. Senate seat if they had one good candidate. What they have is two bad candidates.
To have a chance of stopping Rubio, who has run on the pledge of vigorously opposing Obama’s and the Democrats’ left lurch across the board, the Democrats need a game changer. Will they get one in the form of lawsuit the Republican Party of Florida is considering filing?
Back to the candidates for the moment: Bad candidate number one is Miami Congressman Kendrick Meek. He’s been down-the-line for the Obama agenda and every leftist cause and enjoys little support outside of South Florida. He has chronically polled in the low twenties in Florida’s three-way Senate race, even with campaign help from President Obama and former President Billy Bob Clinton. Meek is a large, pleasant fellow, a former state trooper who would doubtless make a fine neighbor or a good guy to watch a ball game with. But he’s just politically wrong in center-right Florida where ObamaCare, which he voted for and defends, is about as popular as the swine flu.
The other bad Democrat — a Democrat in all but registration — is Florida Governor Charlie Crist (I-Charlie), a former RINO now running as an independent. In April Crist parachuted out of the political party that he had been either running for or holding office in since 1992. He left because Florida Republicans showed a distinct preference (so distinct as to be about two to one in most polls) for the conservative Rubio over the moderate to liberal Crist in the Republican primary campaign for the Senate seat.
Before Crist left the Republican Party he made a multi-month effort to portray himself as a conservative, clearly the approach Florida Republican voters prefer in 2010. With a straight face Crist compared himself to Ronald Reagan. This didn’t wash as what Crist was saying on the campaign trail was so wildly at variance with what he had previously said and done as governor. It’s really hard for a guy who championed Obama’s nearly trillion-dollar “stimulus” slush fund before it was adopted and had actually issued an executive order to put Florida under a state carbon cap and trade policy (the legislature with help from Rubio put a stop to this) to claim the mantle of conservatism.
Since going party-less, Crist has moved his positions on issues starkly to the left across the board. He’s appealing to Democratic constituencies — union members, gays, environmentalists, teachers, et al. — and is being supported by Democratic interest groups like the Teamster’s Union and trial lawyers. Crist is crooning that he will take the best ideas of both parties. But the evidence so far is that he will talk up whatever ideas are polling well at the moment.
It’s tricky business being part of the radical middle, finding things to support that won’t offend members of either party. And Crist needs the votes of a fair fraction of both Republicans and Democrats to have a chance of winning Nov. 2. Only about one in five Florida voters is an independent, and polls show Rubio doing well among independents, a group whose sentiments are well to the right of where they were in 2008.
To this point the “I-feel-very-strongly-both-ways” approach has not worked. Polls of likely voters (as opposed to the merely registered kind) show Rubio between 10 and 16 points ahead of Crist with Meek in third, though not so firmly in third as he was before the August 24 primary. As voters tend to desert third and no-party candidates on Election Day, if the campaign stays on its current trajectory Crist’s chances of finishing third are better than his chances of winning. But will it?
THE LAST NAME FLORIDA Republicans need in the news-cycle right now is Jim Greer, the former Republican Party of Florida chairman who was charged in March with six felony counts of grand theft and money laundering from a consulting company he allegedly set up to siphon off money from the RPOF. But they may get him back in all his un-glory.
At a closed-door meeting last weekend the RPOF executive board considered filling suit against Greer and other players who benefited from the spending, including Crist. The suit would be to vindicate the party and recover money misspent by Greer et al. Executive committee members will decide over the next week or so whether or not to file the suit.
The party will likely soon release a forensic audit that (1) lays the blame for misspending on Greer and associates, (2) shows the party has cleaned up its house and has set up policies to prevent future desperados from using it as an ATM, and (3) that Rubio didn’t have anything to do with the waste and criminality.
There’s no way of knowing how the state’s media will deal with the audit, or the suit if it’s filed. But it’s no secret that much of Florida’s larger media are liberal and have no affection for Republicans, conservatives, or Marco Rubio. There’s always the chance that the conversation, at least in the media, will be changed from the issues that have put Rubio well ahead to “Republican incompetence and corruption,” subjects the media love, regardless of whether there is any merit to them or not. Democrats will be all over it, spinning their little hearts out. At a minimum the suit would open the RPOF to a charge of just wanting to torpedo the apostate Crist’s campaign.
Will all of this be a game changer? It’s too soon to tell. But probably not. One thing we can know now is that regardless of how this story plays out in the media, Florida Democrats still have two bad Senate candidates.
About the Author
Larry Thornberry is a writer in Tampa.
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ggoblue| 9.15.10 @ 7:27AM
i wouldn't worry too much...the electorate has been awakened by the radical named obama...the establishment media believes their own BS, but no one else does. not any more.
48 days until the humiliation of charlie crist...and barak obama.
Redstateboy| 9.15.10 @ 5:13PM
I provide Auto Insurance to FL. residents and that State is Hurt'n!! When I get to the question.. "and your occupation?" I'm hearing constantly: "unemployed" - "oh, sorry to hear that and you spouse?" "She's unemployed too."
Bill| 9.15.10 @ 7:45AM
The lame stream media has lost its way. They are no longer news organizations reporting the facts and doing investigative reports with verified facts. That is why they are in so much financial trouble and many will cease to be part of our landscape in the future. I think most in this country are suspect of what they read in the papers and if negative reporting results that is not based on fact they will be dismissed as just continuing to be part of Barry's propaganda machine.
Jim O'Brien| 9.15.10 @ 8:57AM
Rubio is the only one who has read, understands, and believes in the U.S. Constitution. Rubio is exactly the right guy.
Crist reminds me of Oympia Snowe and Susan Collins, the two Democrat Senators from Maine. Meek is Obama.
DVG93| 9.15.10 @ 9:27AM
I changed from dem to rep last year because my hopes of voting for conservative dems vanished.
At leat now I can vote for a candidate I want to win before the general election.
Does anyone believe anything coming from big media anymore?
There are the four evils.
Big media, big government, big business, and big unions.
All four would love to suppress freedom.
skedaddle| 9.15.10 @ 9:56AM
If Rubio's clean all he needs to do is say loud and clear that he's glad the corruption was found out and supports measures to prevent it in the future. That's really what people want to hear - no excuses.
A.M. Mallett| 9.15.10 @ 1:41PM
Unless Fox News joins the feeding frenzy, the conservative retire belt that drives elections in FL are not likely to bolt to the Dems.
Charles Curran| 9.15.10 @ 1:46PM
Greer, Christ represent the past, Rubio the future.Unless that Rep. from Georgia was correct about Guam, and Florida tips over and sinks, Marco will be our next Senator.
Lsturner| 9.15.10 @ 2:37PM
Rubio for President, the man who beleives the USA is the great country in history against the man spends his time going around the world apologizing for America
Tim| 9.15.10 @ 3:25PM
I recommended this article to a friend, but for goodness sake don't ever google "Florida three way"...
John DuBose| 9.15.10 @ 3:39PM
All these 3 way races make my head spin.
We need to rethink the electoral system and try
approval voting see www.approvalvoting.org
WAY better
Clay Shentrup | 9.16.10 @ 6:02PM
Approval Voting would indeed be a superior alternative. It's much better and simpler than other systems, particularly Instant Runoff Voting.
The ApprovalVoting.org website is kind of "dead". A great recent article about Approval Voting (and Score Voting, of which Approval is the simplest form) can be found at the blog of Nader's former running mate, Matt Gonzalez, here:
asitoughttobe.wordpress.com/2010/07/18/score-voting/
Also, some great refutations of some disturbingly common misconceptions about "problems" with Approval Voting are here:
scorevoting.net/BulletVoting.html
scorevoting.net/GermanApprovalStudies.html
There is some really exciting momentum for Approval Voting right now in Colorado and Texas, particularly among Greens and Libertarians.
John A.| 9.15.10 @ 4:10PM
Approval voting?? Because we need people that can't make up their mind deciding who to vote for? Sorry, I think that's ridiculous.
I'm looking forward to November!
Clay Shentrup | 9.16.10 @ 6:15PM
John A,
It's not about not being able to make up their minds. Say you have 3 very similar candidates, we'll call X, Y, and Z. Then you have a 4th candidate who is different from them, we'll call W.
Say 70% of the voters would take ANYONE over W, with preference orderings like this.
25% X>Y>Z>W
23% Y>X>Z>W
22% Z>X>Y>W
30% W>X>Y>Z
With ordinary "Plurality" voting, W wins the election, even though a huge majority of voters would take anyone else. With Approval Voting, those 3 similar candidates don't have to "split" the vote. Their supporters can vote for 2 or even 3 of them, instead of just 1. Then the result will be much more representative of the will of the voters. You can actually show that with an objective metric of voter satisfaction called "Bayesian regret".
Using Bayesian regret figures, we can see that the improvement in average voter satisfaction we would get by upgrading to Approval Voting would be about the same improvement as upgrading to our present system from random "name out of a hat" NON-democracy. In other words, Approval Voting doubles the effect of democracy. That's huge.
Approval Voting also has the nice property that you NEVER have to fear "wasting" your vote on your sincere favorite candidate. Say you want to support an independent, or Green, or Libertarian, but you still want to cast a "strategic" vote for your favorite of the two major party candidates. With Approval Voting, you can do that. Nader supporters back in 2000 could have voted for Nader AND voted for e.g. Gore. Conservatives could have voted for e.g. the Constitution Party AND voted for e.g. Bush.
And then what happens is, if enough people happen to support one of those alternative candidates, that candidate can ACTUALLY WIN, even if the voters thought he had no chance.
This also dramatically decreases the importance of "indicators of electability" like huge sums of cash from corporate donors, or nominations from the major parties. So much of candidates' time these days is spent proving to voters that they CAN win rather than that they SHOULD win, hence they have to raise all that money and gain way more publicity than is necessary to just convey their message to voters. If we can decrease the importance of cash, then candidates will hopefully spend less time fund-raising and more time talking about the issues.
There are just so many benefits associated with Approval Voting.
Brian| 9.16.10 @ 4:23AM
I for one want to know what the RPOF was doing with the money. I have a good idea what the big spendin rats have been doing.