By Neal B. Freeman
Wednesday, August 24, 2022
Jacksonville, Fla. — The headline from
Florida’s election is that Charlie Crist, who seemed to be dead in the water
only a month ago, surged to an impressive victory in the gubernatorial primary
and now poses a credible threat to Ron DeSantis. In mid August polling, Crist had
closed to within six to eight points of “America’s governor,” though DeSantis
remains the front-runner. With a bump from his win yesterday over an aggressive
and well-financed opponent, Crist could begin the general-election campaign
within the margin of error. Crist will run in 2022 as a Florida version of
Biden 2020 — as the calm and decent and normal choice.
What happened? What bent the race out of shape? What
happened was a raid in south Florida. Across the country, it was a big story.
Here in Florida, it was a seismic event.
(I use the word “raid” in its generally accepted sense.
When 30 FBI agents armed with automatic weapons rush into your home uninvited,
it’s a raid. When it happens to the guy down the street, it’s a court-approved
search.)
Here’s where the leading GOP players stand.
Donald Trump. If Trump wants GOP support here
for a 2024 campaign, it’s now his for the asking. The Raid didn’t just stop the
steady erosion of support to more viable GOP alternatives. It packed outraged,
middle-roading Republicans atop his hard base, giving Trump enough sway for at
least short-term party control. If the Democrats’ intention was to revive
Trump’s flagging prospects, The Raid was an unqualified success.
Ron DeSantis. Over the past four years,
DeSantis has played politics in Trump World with remarkable discipline. The
governor has stayed just close enough to Trump to avoid an open rift and public
reprisal, but just far enough away to build his own constituency. It’s been a
high-wire act and, for a young politician, DeSantis has walked it with
impressive maturity. But he has now been knocked off-kilter. After The Raid,
DeSantis had no choice but to embrace Trump, and he did so with no apparent
reluctance. To some extent — the dimensions of which will manifest themselves
over the coming weeks — the gubernatorial race has just become more about Trump
and less about DeSantis, which is good news for Crist and bad news for
DeSantis.
The Raid itself, in simultaneously boosting Trump and
damaging DeSantis, may have been the most effective August Surprise ever
devised. Somewhere, Chuck Colson is paying his professional respects.
Rick Scott. The junior senator arrived in
Washington in 2019 and, playing to form, immediately assessed his prospects of
becoming the GOP nominee in 2024. Those prospects ranged, even in the estimate
of the irrepressible Scott, from none to almost none. So Scott, playing to form
yet again, took the big swing. He accepted the thankless job of electing a GOP
Senate majority in a year that tilted sharply Democrat. As of this writing, he
is coming up short, thanks in large part to flawed Trump favorites — Oz in
Pennsylvania, Masters in Arizona, and Walker in Georgia. A bright red tide
could save one or more of them, but Scott never walks away from the table
empty-handed. A close Trump associate tells me that, if Trump makes it back to
the White House, his candidate for GOP Senate leader will be Rick Scott.
Marco Rubio. The senior senator never seems
to catch a break. This year, with crime a leading issue across the urban
centers of the state, and with many independent Florida voters both old and
scared, Rubio has drawn an opponent seemingly escaped from a bioweapons lab at
the Democratic National Committee — a telegenic, black, female cop. Her name is
Val Demings, and it matters little that she was not a very good cop. (A large
majority of her peers in law enforcement loudly support Rubio.) The political
reality is that Demings, now a congresswoman from the Orlando area, is
custom-designed for contemporary Florida.
In a much-hyped but outlying poll taken August 8–12,
Demings had pulled ahead of Rubio, 48–44. Yeah, maybe. More ominous for Rubio
were the July fundraising numbers. Demings took in $4.7 million, Rubio $2
million. Rubio has the reputation of being a fast closer, but he may need a red
tide rising this year.
Susie Wiles. The exquisitely named Ms. Wiles
is the best political operator in the state of Florida. She managed the
controversial businessman Rick Scott from nowhere to the governor’s mansion.
She carried Florida for Trump. And in 2018 she picked up the floundering
gubernatorial campaign of the little-known Congressman DeSantis and shoved it
across the victory line. She’s tough and smart and — did I mention tough? (As a
bonus for readers of a certain age, this gratuitous factoid: She is the
daughter of Pat Summerall, who for many years shared the NFL broadcast booth
with John Madden.)
In September of 2019, with DeSantis’s reelection and
follow-on national campaigns moving into the planning stage, and for reasons
never satisfyingly explained, DeSantis fired her. To the surprise of nobody who
knows her, Wiles landed on her feet. She now runs a Trump PAC, and there are
those who think that Wiles, who is said to be almost native-Irish in her capacity
to nurse grudges, might poke a stick in the spokes of the DeSantis campaign
bicycle.
Francis Suarez. Last winter, the antsy and
mediagenic mayor of Miami saw some daylight and began to run toward it. With
both Rubio and Scott seemingly dead-ended, and with Trump and DeSantis
hardening into postures of mutual assured destruction, Suarez looked in the
mirror one morning and asked himself not unreasonably, “If Pete Buttigieg can
run nationally as the mayor of Flyspeckia, why can’t the mayor of a real city in
a political superstate do even better?” Suarez ordered up a national press
blitz, launched some precision-targeted criticism at Trump, let it be known
that he had not voted for DeSantis, and began running digital ads in Iowa, New
Hampshire, and South Carolina. Suarez was off and running. Then came The Raid.
Oops! Suarez now finds himself in no-man’s land, and it will be interesting to
see which way he runs now.
The Codel. Florida’s congressional delegation
now stands at 16 Republicans and eleven Democrats. Last spring, the
Republican-controlled legislature drew maps that, with the addition of the
state’s new post-census seat, would in a normal year produce an 18–10
delegation. DeSantis vetoed that plan and forced through one of his own that,
in a good GOP year, could produce a 20–8 split. It was a gutsy call. If
successful — if the red tide actually materializes — it could mean the
difference in control of the U.S. House. If the red tide recedes before
cresting, however, the DeSantis plan could put two safe Republican seats in
jeopardy this cycle and, sometime later in the decade, two or three more.
It’s campaign season in Florida, ladies and gentlemen,
the fastest 77 days in your political calendar.
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