TAMPA — After some truly remarkable twists and turns, and some
political cross-dressing on the part of one candidate, the Florida
Senate race has taken on some clarity. The candidates have been
defined. The polls are consistent week to week. The undecided have
become harder and harder to find. Just as well, with only two weeks
left before Election Day and early voting underway.
This situation may be boring for some political writers,
who’ve recently tried to gin up a little heavy breathing about the
possibility of the Democratic candidate in this race, Congressman
Kendrick Meek of Miami, dropping out of the race and supporting
independent Governor Charlie Crist. A lot of column inches have
been devoted to this highly unlikely event since Stephen Moore of
the Wall Street Journal floated the idea in a speculative
piece Oct. 8. Crist and his campaign, who think this is swell,
have tried to egg the idea on. But don’t hold your
breath.
The drop out reasoning goes in this wise: Conservative
former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio holds a large lead over
both Crist and Meek — the latest Real Clear Politics average of
polls shows Rubio with 45 percent, Crist 28.8, and Meek 21. Rubio
is ahead because he’s essentially running against two Democrats who
are splitting the left to center-left vote. Crist alone would be
competitive against Rubio, the dropout crowd says, and some polls
confirm this. So better for Meek to quit the race and back Crist in
order to prevent a real conservative from winning the Senate
seat.
There’s a good deal questionable in this line of
reasoning, beginning with the assumption that all Meek voters would
automatically switch their allegiance to Crist if Meek were no
longer in the race. Let’s look at this one. The first
African-American state-wide candidate, who has been campaigning for
this seat since before the trash from the Obama inauguration events
was cleaned up, who was the first state-wide candidate in Florida
to qualify to run by petition, and who beat a really rich white guy
in the Democratic primary who spent a ton of his own money, is to
be asked now to bugger off because this other white guy has a
better chance of beating a Republican most Democrats don’t
like.
Nah. First of all, Meek’s presence on the ballot would
help black turnout, which would be beneficial to Democratic
candidates across the state. Stiffing Meek in this way would do
short and long-term damage to Florida Democrats’ relations with
blacks, the party’s most reliable constituency. Many blacks would
not show up on Election Day to vote for Crist or for other
Democrats. And they would resent the party’s treatment of Meek for
a long time. Result: Rubio wins anyway, and the Democratic Party of
Florida is badly damaged.
Meek has said he won’t drop out. And
unlike Crist, who can almost always be relied on to say one thing
and then do something else, Meek almost always does what he says
he’s going to do. Meek truly dislikes Crist, and with good reason.
It’s almost impossible to imagine Meek supporting Crist.
Until April 30 Crist was a Republican trying to compete
with Rubio by claiming he was the most conservative guy on the
peninsula. After Rubio built up a two to one poll lead over Crist
in the primary, Crist bolted the Republican Party saying it had
become too conservative for him. He switched all his positions on
issues from left to right and started poaching Meek’s
supporters.
Crist’s campaign, based on the notion that he will take
the best ideas of both parties, has fetched in a few Florida
Democratic household names and perhaps a third of Democratic voters
say they will vote for him. But in the past two months his standing
in the polls has deteriorated as more voters see him as a rank
opportunist and Rubio’s conservative campaign is
better known. My friend, retired University of South
Florida political science professor and popular local talking head
Darryl Paulson, calls Crist the Goldilocks candidate. “Crist says
Rubio is too far to the right, Meek is too far to the left, but I’m
just right.”
It’s not working. Increasingly Florida voters have Crist
pegged not as a politician with principled moderate positions, but
as a guy who wants so badly to be a U.S. Senator that he will take
whatever positions the latest polls tell him he should
take.
Two weeks can be a long time in politics. Something may
well change in the Florida Senate race. But the lineup isn’t likely
to. It appears in the Senate race the Florida Democratic Party will
have to try to beat one good Republican with one weak Democrat and
one former RINO who will impersonate a Democrat (as he was
impersonating a Republican less than six months ago) for only as
long as he sees the need to.
