“This guy wants to be President of the United States of America,” Crist said in his victory speech. “However, when we defeat him on November 8th, this show is over.” The task will not be easy. DeSantis has raised $132 million for the fall general election, a record for a non-self-funded gubernatorial candidate, and has energized the Republican base more than any Democratic politician not named Donald Trump. His party surpassed Democrats in registered voters in Florida for the first time. And he can point to a state economy that appears to be booming, with more people moving into the state than anywhere else in the country, record tourism numbers and an unemployment rate of 2.7 percent — nearly a full point below the federal rate. But Democrats argued that prosperity was not shared by all. With some of the fastest rising home prices and rents in the country, Florida has become a paradise that many can no longer afford. A property insurance crisis has threatened coverage for millions of homeowners as hurricane season reaches its zenith. LGBTQ Floridians say the DeSantis administration has made the state more hostile toward them, while some women say the new abortion restrictions eliminate choice in their bodies and may force them to see medically dangerous pregnancies. Crist’s argument against another four-year DeSantis also relies on Floridians yearning for a less divisive tone from their leader. Throughout the Democratic primary, Crist and Fried have portrayed DeSantis as a bully and tyrant far more focused on running for the White House than governing the nation’s third-largest state. Repeatedly, they have noted, DeSantis has forced the other branches of state government to bend to his will, eliminating any checks on his executive power. Earlier Tuesday, DeSantis predicted he would face Crist in the general election. During a press conference in Tallahassee, he dismissed Crist as “a guy who’s been running for office for five decades, who votes with (Joe) Biden 100 percent of the time,” and made it clear that he intends to frame the race around his controversial response to the coronavirus pandemic. Crist, he said, “is against every decision I’ve made to keep this state open, to keep people’s rights, to respect their rights, to save jobs, to keep kids in school, to save businesses.” . Inside his watch party in St. Petersburg, Christ didn’t have to wait long for good news. By the time his campaign welcomed supporters to the Hilton conference room just after the polls closed at 7 p.m., early voting strongly suggested it would be a drama-free night. The crowd erupted in cheers as a big screen showed an overwhelmingly promising start to the count for Crist. See the full Florida results here.
Repeating Biden’s book?
By choosing Crist, Democrats are betting that a well-known and inoffensive candidate gives them the best chance to unseat a divisive but dynamic Republican incumbent. It’s a playbook almost identical to the one Biden successfully deployed to defeat Trump in 2020. “I’ve met him. I’ve known him. I trust him,” Darla Price, a retiree from St. Petersburg, told CNN after voting for Crist. But the Biden plan didn’t work in Florida. Trump won the state by a larger margin in 2020 than he did in 2016. Crist himself has not won a statewide general election in Florida in 16 years, though he has tried repeatedly. For Crist, 66, Tuesday’s victory is another chapter in one of the most unusual careers in American politics. After decades as a Republican — serving as a state legislator, education commissioner, attorney general and reaching the governor’s office in 2007 — Crist fell out of favor with his party for committing the cardinal sin of embracing a Democratic president, Barack Obama . He was defeated in the 2010 Republican Senate primary by Marco Rubio, then lost in the general election as an independent. But four years later he re-emerged as the Democratic nominee to face his successor, then-Gov. Rick Scott. Crist lost 64,000 votes to win back his old job. In 2016, he turned his attention to the House of Representatives and was elected three times as a Democrat to represent his home state of Pinellas County. Many expected Crist’s career to end in Congress. Instead, last May, he entered the governor’s race — a decision that at the time was seen by many Florida Democratic officials and operatives as a relic of the past for a party that needed to look forward. Fried, a 44-year-old with just one previous campaign under her belt, bowed to the Crist comparison and campaigned with the catchphrase, “Something new.” But as Fried tried to shore up her candidacy, Crist’s campaign gained traction. She built a coalition of supporters across the state and across all factions of the party: labor unions, environmental groups, black faith leaders, prominent women leaders and elected officials of all stripes. Popular Democratic lawmakers such as state Rep. Anna Escamani and state Sen. Severyn Jones, who initially rejected Crist, have endorsed him over Fried. The US Supreme Court decision striking down the constitutional right to abortion offered a reinstatement to Fried. He tried to reframe the fight around protecting abortion access and suggested Crist, who once called himself “pro-life,” couldn’t bring that fight to DeSantis. Most primary voters were ultimately unconvinced. Shortly after polls in the Florida Panhandle closed at 8 p.m., Fried told supporters in Fort Lauderdale that she had called Crist to congratulate him on winning the nomination. She strongly hinted that this is not the end of her time in the Florida political arena. “No one has ever broken a glass ceiling on the first pitch,” Fried said.
