ABOVE: Charlie Crist at St Pete Pride 2022. Photo via Crist’s Facebook page.
MIAMI (AP) | U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist won the Democratic nomination for governor in Florida Aug. 23, setting him up to challenge Gov. Ron DeSantis this fall.
In selecting Crist, Florida Democrats sided with the 66-year-old LGBTQ ally who served as Florida’s Republican governor a decade ago. He hopes to appeal to voters in Florida’s teeming suburbs as Democrats seek to reverse a losing pattern in a state that was recently seen as a perennial political battleground.
Above all, the Democratic contest centered on DeSantis, who views his November reelection as a potential springboard into the 2024 presidential contest. Given the stakes, Democrats across Florida and beyond expressed a real sense of urgency to blunt DeSantis’ momentum.
Crist decried DeSantis as an “abusive” and “dangerous” “bully” in his victory speech.
“Tonight, the people of Florida clearly sent a message: They want a governor who cares about them and solves real problems, preserves our freedom, not a bully who divides us and takes our freedom away,” Crist declared. “This guy wants to be president of the United States of America and everybody knows it. However, when we defeat him on Nov. 8 that show is over. Enough.”
Watch the speech below:
Crist won the Democratic nomination over Nikki Fried, the state agriculture commissioner. The 44-year-old cast herself as “something new” and hoped to become Florida’s first female governor. In a sign of the party’s meager standing in Florida, she’s currently the only Democrat holding statewide office.
“We are going to make Ronald DeSantis a one-term governor and a zero-term president of the United States,” she said as she conceded, calling on her supporters to unite behind Crist.
DeSantis won his first election by less than half a percentage point but soon became one of the most prominent figures in GOP politics. His hands-off approach to the coronavirus pandemic and eagerness to lean into divides over race, gender and LGBTQ rights have resonated with many Republican voters who see DeSantis as a natural heir to former President Donald Trump. He has signed a number of anti-LGBTQ bills into law during his first term, among them Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay or Trans” legislation.
From a raucous ballroom in Miami Tuesday night, a fiery DeSantis declined to say Crist’s name and instead cast the general election as a contest against President Joe Biden and “woke” ideology.
“We will never ever surrender to the woke agenda,” DeSantis charged. “Florida is a state where woke goes to die.”
The Florida contest concludes the busiest stretch of primaries this year, which featured contests in 18 states over just 22 days. In that span, Republicans from Arizona to Alaska have supported contenders who embraced Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen, an assertion roundly rejected by elections officials, the former president’s attorney general and judges he appointed.
Indeed, Democrats are entering the final weeks ahead of the midterms with a sense of cautious optimism, hoping the Supreme Court’s decision overturning a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion will energize the party’s base. But Democrats still face tremendous headwinds, including economic uncertainty and the historic reality that most parties lose seats in the first midterm after they’ve won the White House.
The dynamics are especially challenging for Democrats in Florida, one of the most politically divided states in the U.S. Its last three races for governor were decided by 1 percentage point or less. But the state has steadily become more favorable to Republicans in recent years.
For the first time in modern history, Florida has more registered Republicans — nearly 5.2 million — than Democrats, who have nearly 5 million registered voters. Fried serves as the only Democrat in statewide office. And Republicans have no primary competition for four of those five positions – governor, U.S. Senate, attorney general and chief financial officer — which are all held by GOP incumbents.
Crist has vowed to serve all Floridians if elected, detailing such in his first video as the Democratic nominee:
Ahead of the primary, he also unveiled his specific plan to protect LGBTQ Floridians, available in full here.
“We are all children of God, and as such, Florida’s LGBTQ+ community deserves a governor who honors, respects, and welcomes them — not one that treats them like a political punching bag,” Crist said Aug. 16. “Frankly, Governor DeSantis has forgotten the Golden Rule and his charge to treat all Floridians with basic decency and respect. When I’m governor, we will build a Florida for All that includes LGBTQ+ Floridians.”
Learn more about his campaign at CharlieCrist.com.
