Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist wins primary to face GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis in November
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Florida Rep. Charlie Crist won his state’s Democratic gubernatorial primary on Tuesday night and will now face Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in November.
Sunshine State voters decided that the 66-year-old lawmaker, whose backed by the national Democratic establishment, was a more electable choice compared to fiery progressive Nikki Fried.
DeSantis, whose approval numbers are skyrocketing not just in the Sunshine State but among Republicans nationwide, is uncontested in the GOP primary.
Crist had been polling ahead of Fried, Florida’s outspoken left-wing Agricultural Commissioner, for weeks.
He came out ahead early on Tuesday night and retained a comfortable double-digit lead after polls closed at 7pm Eastern Time.
Crist went into Tuesday’s race with high profile endorsements including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
The moderate lawmaker was a Republican when he served one term as governor of Florida from 2007 until 2011. After a failed bid for Senate he narrowly lost re-election to Republican Rick Scott in 2014.
He ran as a Democrat for Florida’s 13th Congressional District, a seat he’s held since 2017.
Crist’s race has been a smaller-scale test run of President Joe Biden’s successful 2020 campaign, though the Democrat lost Florida to Donald Trump in that race.
Like Biden he’s sought to portray himself as a unifying and non-divisive candidate who’s focused on kitchen table issues.
He reasserted that campaign strategy during his victory speech on Tuesday night. Surrounded by family while addressing ecstatic supporters, Crist said: ‘The people of Florida clearly sent a message. They want a governor who cares about them to solve real problems, who preserves our freedom.
In a shot at DeSantis, he added, ‘not a bully who divides us while taking our freedom away.’
Florida Gubernatorial candidate Rep. Charlie Crist (D-FL) speaks to the media before casting his vote in the primary election at The Gathering Church on August 23, 2022
Crist is now going up against the Sunshine State’s popular Republican governor, Ron DeSantis
On the other end of the Democratic spectrum is Fried, who was briefly seen as a darling of the progressive movement when she became Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat in 2018.
Fried seemed to gain momentum amid nationwide outrage over the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade in June.
Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried made waves in 2018 when she became the only Democrat elected statewide
She contrasted herself from Crist by taking forceful stances on issues like abortion and legalizing marijuana, arguing that her fiery persona is the perfect match-up to defeat a bombastic and culture war-focused DeSantis campaign.
DeSantis predicted Fried would lose on Tuesday during a state Cabinet meeting hours before the polls closed.
He said she ‘had an opportunity as being the only Democrat elected statewide to exercise some leadership and get some things done and instead she’s used her time to basically try to smear me on a daily basis.’
‘She should’ve been able to win that going away and it seems like she’s going to come up not just short but significantly short and I think that’s probably why,’ DeSantis said.
But November is still likely to bring an uphill battle.
Early polls have shown DeSantis besting both Crist and Fried in hypothetical match-ups, a meteoric rise after having narrowly won the governorship in 2018.
He became a breakout GOP star for his vocal opposition to the Biden administration’s COVID-19 policies and has remained in the headlines.
Leaning into conservative stances on LGBTQ matters, schools and race earned him appreciation from Republicans across the country, including a significant swath of Trump supporters.
The governor’s also thought to have his sights on the White House in 2024.
He’s amassed a hefty war chest for a politician at the state level, with more than $100 million already given to his 2022 campaign.
Even before winning his race, Crist already set his sights on DeSantis, attacking him on Election Day as a ‘barbaric, wannabe dictator’ in comments to The Guardian.
‘He is the opposite of freedom. He is an autocrat. He is a demagogue. And I think people are sick of him,’ Crist told the Associated Press the same day.