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Analysis: 2014 is a year of missed opportunity for Southern Democrats
Democrats across the region making little headway in overcoming Republican hegemony
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
This year, 10 GOP-held U.S. Senate seats are up for election across the South. Democrats mounted serious challenges to just two of them.
This year, seven Republican-held Southern governorships are on the ballot. Democrats mounted serious challenges in just two of those races as well.
Heading into this election, Republicans hold 108 of the 151 U.S. House seats in the South. Democrats put just six of them in play and could very well come away without gaining a single seat, while at least four of their own seats are in serious jeopardy.
With the exception of Georgia, where Democrats are making surprisingly strong runs for both U.S. Senator and governor, 2014 has been a year of miscues and might-have-beens for the party of Jackson.
For example, at the beginning of the year, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley had shaky job approval numbers and looked like she might be vulnerable. Now, she’s poised to roll to re-election on Tuesday, which could put her in the national conversation in 2016.
Down in Florida, Republican Governor Rick Scott’s rocky tenure in Tallahassee gave Democrats a golden opportunity, which they may have squandered by giving their nomination to the deeply flawed Charlie Crist.
A year ago in Texas, State Senator Wendy Davis was the darling of liberals everywhere, poised to lead Lone Star Democrats to the promised land after 20 years in the wilderness. Her inept campaign for governor has left those hopes in tatters, although it could be argued that a candidate best known for a full-throttled defense of abortion wasn’t that viable in a place like Texas to begin with.
In Florida earlier this year, Democrats failed to wrest the 13th District U.S. House seat — which Barack Obama carried twice — from Republicans during a special election, which left them with no chance to win it in the fall.
Florida 13 is one of three Republican-held House seats in the South that Obama carried in 2012. The GOP is poised to carry all three on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, there are five Democrat-held Southern House seats that Mitt Romney carried in 2012. Republicans are making strong runs in all five.
So moribund is the Democratic Party in Alabama that it didn’t even field a candidate to run against Republican U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions. And in both Oklahoma and South Carolina, where both Senate seats are up this year, Democrats couldn’t muster a serious challenge in any of those four races.
Senate seats are likely to flip from Democratic to Republican hands in both West Virginia and Arkansas, with Democrat-held seats in both North Carolina and Louisiana in jeopardy. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell appears to be beating back a Democratic challenge in Kentucky.
That leaves Georgia as the only bright spot for Democrats. Michelle Nunn has combined innate political talent with a strong campaign to make herself competitive in a state where Democrats haven’t won a Senate race since 1996.
However, if she can’t polish off David Perdue on Tuesday, the race will head to a January runoff — and runoffs can be nasty, brutish and unpredictable.
So here is the state of play, heading into Tuesday:
- Republicans hold 20 of the 28 Southern Senate seats. That number will almost certainly rise.
- Republicans hold 10 of 14 governorships. Given that the GOP will likely make a pick-up in Arkansas, the best Democrats can hope for is to go from four to five, if they take out incumbents in both Georgia and Florida — a tall order..
- The GOP holds 108 of the 151 House seats. Odds are the Republican margin will increase slightly.
All in all, Republican hegemony is alive and well across the Southland.
Clinton and Giuliani appear in ads for Florida candidates they once opposed
Clinton calls Democrat Charlie Crist “the people’s governor,” as Giuliani slams Crist in an ad for Republican Rick Scott
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com
MIAMI (CFP) — Just eight years after working to defeat Charlie Crist in the 2006 Florida governor’s race, former President Bill Clinton has cut a new television ad touting Crist as “the people’s governor.”
In the ad, which began airing statewide October 28, Clinton tells voters the Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat “really cares about making your life better.”
“I hope you’ll stand with Charlie. He needs your vote.”
Not to be outdone in the surrogate wars, the campaign of Crist’s opponent, Republican Governor Rick Scott, began airing a clip of a recent speech by former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in which he slams the party-switching Crist.
“I’ve never met a person in politics that I disrespect more than Charlie Crist,” Giuliani said.
When Crist ran for governor in 2006 as a Republican, Clinton came to the Sunshine State to campaign for his opponent, former Democratic U.S. Rep. Jim Davis, while Giuliani campaigned for Crist.
In 2010, after Crist decided to forsake Tallahassee and run for the U.S. Senate as an independent, Giuliani supported one of Scott’s opponents, former Attorney General Bill McCollum, in the GOP primary.
With less than a week to go before the election, polls show the race between Scott and Crist is too close to call.
Watch the ads featuring Clinton and Giuliani:
Debate between Crist and Scott in Florida starts off with nasty spat over a fan
Republican Gov. Rick Scott refuses to take the stage because of a fan placed under Crist’s podium
DAVIE, Florida (CFP) — A gubernatorial debate in Florida took a bizarre turn, when Republican Gov. Rick Scott initially refused to take the stage after a fan was placed under the podium of Democrat Charlie Crist, in apparent violation of the rules of the October 15 debate.
Florida Governor Rick Scott
Scott eventually relented and took the stage at Broward College, but not before Crist got into a contretemps with the debate moderator, Elliott Rodriguez, over whether the fan violated the rules.
“Are we really going to debate about a fan?” Crist said.
Asked later in the debate why he wanted to use a fan despite the rules, Crist said, “Why not?”
“Is there anything wrong with being comfortable? I don’t think there is.”
During the debate, Scott continued a line of attack that he has made throughout the campaign that during Crist’s tenure as governor between 2007 and 2011 — when Crist was a Republican — the state lost 832,000 jobs. Scott charged that Crist was so consumed by his ambition for higher office that he didn’t do enough to promote economic development.
“He didn’t want to do the job. He wanted to be vice president and then ran against Marco Rubio for the Senate,” Scott said. “Charlie is a lot of talk. But he’s not a lot of action.”
Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist
But Crist responded that he could not be held responsible for jobs lost during the Great Recession.
“The people of Florida know that I didn’t cause the global economic meltdown,” he said. “They are smarter than that.”
Crist also hit Scott for not pushing through the private option expansion of Medicaid that was part of Obamacare in Florida.
“People are hurting, and they are suffering,” he said, adding that “I don’t know why” Scott hasn’t pushed for Medicaid expansion.
But Scott responded that Crist was actually governor when Obamacare was passed.
“Did he go to the legislature to pass this because it’s a great idea? No,” Scott said, adding that “Obamacare is a bad law.”
To a chorus of boos from the audience, Crist also raised a line of attack that he has made throughout the campaign over fraud charges lodged against Scott’s former company, HCA, in 1997.
“The truth hurts sometimes,” Crist said. “You pled the Fifth 75 times.”
Scott was never charged in connection with the HCA fraud, although the company paid a $600 million fine. The same issue was unsuccessfully raised against Scott in 2010 when he was first elected governor.
Scott was also pressed on whether he thought Florida’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, passed by voters in 2008, was discriminatory.
“While I believe in traditional marriage, we have to understand people have different views,” Scott said, noting that the ban is currently being challenged in court.
Pressed further if he thought the ban was discriminatory, Scott said only, “I don’t believe in discrimination.”
Crist came back swinging, saying he supported same-sex marriage, even though in 2008, when he was a Republican governor, he supported that amendment. Scott then pounced on Crist’s inconsistency.
“We don’t know what Charlie believes on this issue because he’s taken every side on this issue,” Scott said.
Polls have shown the race for governor in the Sunshine State is too close to call.
Crist was elected governor as a conservative Republican in 2006. In 2010, he gave up the governorship to pursue a U.S. Senate seat, first as a Republican and then as an independent. He became a Democrat in 2012.
Analysis: Florida Democrats putting their eggs in Charlie Crist’s (flawed) basket
Democrats are gambling that Crist won’t do something foolish or shameless before election day
♦By Rich Shumate, Chickenfriedpolitics.com editor
More than 4.6 million registered Democrats call Florida home. Surely, in a pool of people that enormous, the party could have found somebody — anybody — to nominate for governor who is not as inherently flawed as Charlie Crist.
But what’s done is done. Democrats have given one of their prized political possessions to a man who has pulled off the hat trick of being a Republican, an independent and a Democrat in just four short years. Look in the dictionary under “political opportunist,” and you will find his uber-tanned countenance, smiling sweetly back at you.
Now, Democrats must hold their breath until November, hoping that Crist won’t do something foolish or shameless in the next three months that will ensure Governor Rick Scott’s re-election. Good luck with that.
Given Scott’s frequently turbulent tenure in Tallahassee, the governor should be in a lot more trouble than he is. Surely this should have been a race into which politically ambitious Democrats were anxious to plunge. But none of them were, and, as a result, this contest is, essentially, a dead heat, even though the Democrat should be well ahead.
Democrats may still believe that the divisive flavor of Scott’s first term will be enough to push Crist to victory, and the results in November may still prove them right. But an argument can also be made that they would be in better shape right now had they not nominated a man who has enough political baggage to fill all his overhead bins.
That was essentially the argument that Nan Rich made in the Democratic primary. Nobody listened to her. Her decades of service to the Democratic Party went unrewarded. Crist, who in comparison to Rich has been a Democrat for about 15 minutes, took the prize instead.
So what made Crist’s resurrection possible? In a word, money. He has the ability to raise a ton of it. Not as much as Scott, of course, who can also just get out his hefty personal checkbook if need be. But Crist’s argument that he was person best equipped to defeat Scott apparently resonated with Democrats.
Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.
In any case, no other up-and-coming Democrats were willing to endure the prospect of facing big-spending Crist in the primary and, then, if successful, facing the bigger-spending Scott in the general election. The result? Crist is heading into the general election without having fought for the Democratic nomination, a fight that might have demonstrated whether he still has the political chops to go the distance.
If Crist loses in November, Florida Democrats — particularly those who view Scott as nothing short of diabolical — will be kicking themselves for the next four years. And Charlie Crist? Well, there’s a Senate race in 2016, and he hasn’t been a Libertarian yet.
Florida’s last two governors, Rick Scott and Charlie Crist, to battle in November
Crist, who served a single term as governor as a Republican, wins the Democratic nomination to face off with incumbent Republican Scott
TALLAHASSEE, Florida (CFP) — This November, Florida voters will choose between their current governor and his immediate predecessor in what’s likely to be an expensive and pitched battle for the state’s top job.
Former Governor Charlie Crist won the Democratic nomination for governor in the August 26 primary, besting former State Senator Nan Rich with 74 percent of the vote. Republican Governor Rick Scott, 61, did even better in his primary, taking 88 percent against two little known opponents.
Crist’s win caps a remarkable political makeover for a man who started out in politics as a conservative Republican, serving as attorney general before getting elected governor in 2006.
In 2010, he gave up the governorship to pursue an open U.S. Senate seat. When he fell way behind the eventual winner, GOP U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, in the polls, he bolted the GOP and ran unsuccessfully as an independent. in 2012, after endorsing President Obama for re-election, he became a Democrat and then jumped into the governor’s race.
In her campaign, Rich tried to make the case to Democrats that, unlike Crist, she was a longtime party loyalist. But her campaign never caught traction.
In a victory speech to supporters in Fort Lauderdale, Crist said the general election will be “about making sure that Floridians get their Florida back.”
“Our Florida is one where fairness and opportunity trump money and partisanship,” he said. “Our Florida is one where common sense and compassion come before cynicism and cronyism. And most importantly, our Florida is one where the government works for and answers to the people, not the special interests.”
Scott did not make a public speech on election night, instead releasing a statement saying the November election will be about “talk versus action.”
“That means Florida will have a choice between a governor who sent our state into a tailspin and a governor who gets results,” he said. “Charlie Crist failed as governor, lost 830,000 jobs, and tried to run off to Washington – and now he wants his job back.”
Scott, an multimillionaire former health care executive, pumped $75 million of his own money to win the governorship in 2010 in his first run for political office. He is expected to have a significant financial advantage over Crist in a state with numerous, expensive media markets, although Crist has so far raised more than $20 million.
Polls show the race as a dead heat with a little more than two months left before the general election.
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