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Here he goes again: Charlie Crist leaving Congress to run for Florida governor
Crist makes another run for state’s top office after statewide losses in 2010 and 2014
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
ST. PETERSBURG, Florida (CFP) — He’s run for 10 times for six different offices over the past three decades and has been, at various times, a Republican, an independent and a Democrat. And now Charlie Crist is giving up his relatively safe seat in Congress to once again seek the state’s top office as a Democrat that he once held as a Republican.
U.S. Rep. Charlie Crist, D-Florida, announces run for governor in St. Petersburg (From WPTV via YouTube)
Crist announced Tuesday that he would forgo re-election to his 13th District U.S. House seat in order to challenge Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in 2022.
“This won’t be an easy fight, but nothing in life worth fighting for is easy,” Crist told supporters at a kickoff rally in his hometown of St. Petersburg. “I’m running so you will be in charge again, so you will have a governor who will work for the people with a steady hand and an open heart.”
Crist opened the campaign with a broadside against DeSantis, whom, he said, “doesn’t listen, who doesn’t care and who doesn’t think about you — unless, of course, you write him a campaign check.”
Watch video of Crist’s campaign kickoff rally at end of story
While Crist is the biggest Democratic name to enter the race so far, he may have to battle to get his party’s nomination. Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried — the only Democrat now holding statewide office in the Sunshine State — is expected to run, and U.S. Rep. Val Demings from Orlando is also seriously considering the race.
Crist’s decision also has implications for the Democrats’ narrow House majority, as he represents a swing House district in Pinellas County that Republicans held for more than 30 years before he flipped it in 2016.
The Republican he beat in 2020 by 6 points, Anna Paulina Luna, has already announced a 2022 run.
Should he become the Democratic nominee, Crist would face a formidable foe in DeSantis, who has been building a national political profile to possibly seek the White House in 2024. A Democrat hasn’t won the governorship in Florida since 1994.
Crist’s new political quest is the latest chapter in a complicated political career that has seen him seek six different offices over the last 30 years. His new run for governor will be his 11th campaign overall and seventh statewide.
Crist reached the top in Republican politics in 2006, when he was elected governor as a conservative. But then he then decided to forgo re-election in 2010 to make what turned out to be an ill-considered run for the U.S. Senate. Poised to lose the Republican primary to now U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, Crist bolted the GOP to run unsuccessfully as an independent.
By 2014, he had changed parties again to become a Democrat and narrowly lost the governor’s race to Rick Scott, who now holds the state’s other Senate seat.
Crist, 64, revived his political career in 2016 with his successful run for the House as a Democrat, a seat which he is now giving up after just six years to once again seek higher office.
This will be Crist’s third run for governor. He’s also run unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate twice, in 1998 and 2010, and was also elected as state education commissioner and attorney general before winning the governorship.
He has gone 3-and-3 in his previous statewide races.
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All-Republican runoff set for vacant Texas U.S. House seat
Susan Wright, widow of late U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, will face State. Rep. Jake Ellzey
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
ARLINGTON, Texas (CFP) — Susan Wright, the widow of the late Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, claimed first place Saturday in a special election to fill his Texas’s 6th U.S. House District seat and will now face fellow Republican State Rep. Jake Ellzey in a runoff.
Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez finished just 354 votes behind Ellzey, narrowly missing a chance to set up her party to flip a suburban district in metro Dallas-Fort Worth that Donald Trump carried by just 3 points in November.
Michael Wood — a businessman and former Marine Corps officer who ran openly in the race as an anti-Trump Republican and charged that the GOP has devolved into a “cult of personality” — finished ninth in the 23-person field, showing the limits of that strategy in pro-Trump Texas.
Susan Wright and Jake Ellzey
In a low-turnout Saturday special election with a crowded field, Wright came in first with 15,052 votes (19%), with Ellzey coming in second with 10,851 (14%) and Sanchez in third with 10,497 (13%).
The final day of the contest was rocked by a robocall made in the district accusing Wright of murdering her husband, who died in February from COVID-19 while being treated for cancer. Her campaign contacted the FBI to investigate.
The runoff will be something of a rematch of the Republican runoff for the seat in 2018, when Ron Wright defeated Ellzey to represent the district, which includes Arlington and parts of Tarrant County, along with Ellis and Navarro counties to the south.
Susan Wright has been endorsed by Donald Trump. Ellzey has the support of Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who will set the date for the runoff.
Sanchez had been the Democratic nominee against Ron Wright in 2018, a race chronicled in the Showtime documentary “Surge.” But this time around, she was unable to coalesce enough of the Democratic vote to win a spot in the all-party contest, with the second and third-place Democrats in the field — Shawn Lassiter and Lydia Bean — winning nearly 10,000 votes between them.
The race — the second special election for a Republican-held seat since Trump’s loss in November — drew national attention due to a number of colorful candidates who entered the wide-open contest.
Dan Rodimer, a former professional wrestler who was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for a House seat in the Las Vegas area in 2020, parachuted into Texas to try again, airing an ad in which he carried an assault rifle and vowed to “strip power” from President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — a stance that raised eyebrows in the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
He finished in 11th place.
Sery Kim, a Korean-American who served in the Small Business Administration under Trump, drew criticism when she said during a forum that she did not want Chinese immigrants in the United States “at all” and blamed them for bringing COVID-19 into the United States.
She won just 888 votes and finished 16th.
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Voters head to polls Saturday to fill vacant Texas U.S. House seat
Widow of late GOP U.S. Rep. Ron Wright among 23 candidates in 6th District race
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
ARLINGTON, Texas (CFP) — Voters in Texas 6th U.S. House District will head to the polls Saturday to choose from among 23 candidates in a special election to replace Republican U.S. Rep. Ron Wright, who died in February from COVID-19.
Among the candidates in the field are Wright’s widow, Susan, along with an assault-weapon-toting former professional wrestler who ran for Congress in Nevada in November, a Korean-American who made headlines with anti-Chinese comments, and that rarest of creatures, an openly anti-Trump Republican.
A key question to be answered in Saturday’s all-party contest will be whether any of the 10 Democrats in the race can gain a spot in a likely runoff and flip a district Donald Trump carried by just 3 points in November.
Polls open at 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. in the metro Dallas-Fort Worth district, which includes Arlington and parts of Tarrant County, along with Ellis and Navarro counties to the south.
Among Republicans, polls have shown Susan Wright in a close fight with State Rep. Jake Elizey from Ellis County, just ahead of Brian Harrison, a former chief of staff in the Department of Health and Human Services in the Trump administration who led the race in fundraising.
Among Democrats, Jana Lynne Sanchez, whose unsuccessful 2018 race against Ron Wright was chronicled in the Showtime documentary “Surge,” has led in the polls.
She is competing for Democratic votes against Shawn Lassiter, a public school administrator from Fort Worth who was the top fundraiser among Democratic candidates, and Lydia Bean, a university researcher who was endorsed by the Tarrant County AFL-CIO.
Democrat Stephen Daniel, who lost to Ron Wright by 7 points in November, did not run again.
The race — the second special election for a Republican-held seat since Trump’s loss in November — drew national attention due to a number of colorful candidates who entered the wide-open contest.
Dan Rodimer, a former professional wrestler who was the unsuccessful Republican nominee for a House seat in the Las Vegas area in 2020, parachuted into Texas to try again, airing an ad in which he carried an assault rifle and vowed to “strip power” from President Joe Biden and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — a stance that raised eyebrows in the wake of the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.
Sery Kim, a Korean-American who served in the Small Business Administration under Trump, drew criticism when she said during a forum that she did not want Chinese immigrants in the United States “at all” and blamed them for bringing COVID-19 into the United States.
While she insisted that her remarks were directed at the Chinese Communist Party and were not racist, she was unendorsed by both Korean-American women Republicans now serving in Congress.
Michael Wood, a businessman and former Marine Corps officer, ran openly in the race as an anti-Trump Republican, charging that the GOP has devolved into a “cult of personality” and calling Trump’s actions before the Jan. 6 attack “one of the worst things an American president has ever done.”
While that earned him an endorsement from Trump critic U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Saturday will be a test of what that message has any resonance among suburban Republicans in the Lone Star State.
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Former South Carolina U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham running for governor
Lowcountry Democrat lost his U.S. House re-election bid in 2020
♦By Rich Shumate, ChickenFriedPolitics.com editor
CHARLESTON, South Carolina (CFP) — Former Democratic U.S. Rep. Joe Cunningham officially launched his 2022 campaign for governor on April 26 with a broadside against the Republican establishment that has reigned supreme in Columbia for two decades.
“The challenges that we face are not because of our people. They’re because of our politicians,” Cunningham said in a video launching his campaign. “After 20 years of trying the same thing, it’s time for something different.”
Democrat Joe Cunningham announces run for governor
Cunningham hit State House Republicans and incumbent Republican Governor Henry McMaster for focusing on new abortion and voting restrictions and loosening gun laws as residents struggled to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Governor McMaster has been cheering them on, every step of the way,” Cunningham said. “It’s embarrassing.”
And although a Democrat hasn’t won a governor’s race in the Palmetto State since 1998, Cunningham pointed to his own 2018 U.S. House win as evidence that his campaign is not a lost cause.
“To those who say a Democrat can’t win in South Carolina, well, we’ve heard that before,” he said.
Cunningham, 38, a Charleston lawyer, shocked the political world in 2018 with his win in the state’s 1st District, part of a Democratic wave that swept the party to House control.
However, he could not hold the seat in 2020, losing to Republican Nancy Mace despite raising and spending more than $7 million for the race.
With his name recognition and fundraising prowess, Cunningham will be the prohibitive favorite for the Democratic nomination to face McMaster, who will be running for his second full term as chief executive.
News of Cunningham’s candidacy drew some praise from Republican U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, who told The State newspaper that Cunningham would be “a formidable opponent.”
However, he also noted that his own re-election race in 2020 — where he won by 10 points despite $100 million in spending against him — shows that South Carolina is “still a pretty Republican state.”
Video of Cunningham’s announcement:
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