Crist's Flip-Flops Evade Scrutiny
Charlie Crist’s positions on the teachers unions, offshore drilling, and a host of other major issues change daily. What has not changed is Charlie Crist's front-runner status in the Florida Senate race.
Charlie Crist’s positions on the teachers unions, offshore drilling, and a host of other major issues change daily. What has not changed is that Charlie Crist remains a formidable political figure in Florida politics. A new Quinnipiac poll has Crist leading Marco Rubio by four or seven points depending on which Democrat is nominated in a three-way race. The poll also shows a massive change in public attitudes towards offshore drilling in the wake of the BP fiasco. Ironically, Crist also seems better positioned to shift with the political winds of Hurricane Oil Spill than is the man that forced him to leave the party, Marco Rubio.
Charlie Crist’s fate in the Florida Senate battle will depend not on whether he can convince moderate Republicans into voting for him but rather whether enough Democrats will swing his way to beat Marco Rubio. The Quinnipiac poll finds independent Crist leading Republican candidate Rubio by a margin of 37-33% in a hypothetical three-way matchup with potential Democratic nominee Rep. Kendrick Meek. If Jeff Greene wins the Democratic nomination, Crist’s lead moves up to 40-33%, the poll finds.
Perhaps more important than the race numbers is the fact that the poll finds a massive 48 point swing in Florida voter support for offshore drilling. On April 19th, Qunnipiace found that 66% of likely Florida voters supported drilling while only 27% opposed it. The new poll finds that 51% oppose drilling with only 42% in support. While Crist has been supportive of the idea of drilling in the past, he is now an independent and thus he will likely face less scrutiny than the GOP candidate, Rubio. Fairly or unfairly, as an independent candidate, Crist seems able to flip flop on positions with impunity. In three-party races, independents usually get squeezed when voters run back to their safe positions (voters tend to be reluctant to vote for independents even if they don’t like the mainstream candidates) but that has yet to happen to Crist.