SARASOTA, Fla. (SNN TV) – Governor Jeb Bush helped change the power of the Florida governor and expand the Republican Party in ways we feel to this day. Republicans went from a slight 61-59 seat majority in the Florida House before Bush took office in 1998, to a comfortable 86-43 seat majority in his final two years.
His successor, who was elected in 2006, was popular with Republicans at first, but that changed dramatically by the end of his first term.
In Part 6 of SNN’s 12-part series, “Red, Purple, & Blue: A Sea Change in Florida Politics,” we look at the Charlie Crist years, the differences in how Crist governed compared to later governors, and the hug that started his descent.
2006 GOVERNOR’S RACE
Governor Jeb Bush could not run for governor again in 2006 at the end of his second term due to term limits. On the Republican side, Charlie Crist, who was Florida’s Attorney General and a longtime Florida operative, ran against Florida’s CFO Tom Gallagher.
During the primary campaign, Crist attacked Gallagher for running against Bush in the 1994 Republican primary for governor. Crist alleged that Gallagher compared Bush to Cuban leader Fidel Castro and argued “to be the heir to Jeb Bush, it’s probably good to have supported Jeb Bush.” Crist easily won his primary despite being more moderate than Gallagher, who was favored by evangelicals and neoconservatives.
On the Democratic side, congressman Jim Davis emerged from his primary as he attacked Jeb Bush’s “radical conservative” agenda for Florida. Davis wasn’t able to generate enthusiasm within the Democratic base, winning with 47% of the vote to his opponent’s 41%.
During the general election campaign, Davis’ decision to spend more time campaigning was used against him. In addition, the historical book “From Yellow Dog Democrats to Red State Republicans,” Crist scored six-figure checks from Disney, Princess Tours, Clear Channel, Palm Beach Kennel Club, and U.S. Sugar, and he spent $56 million defining Jim Davis early while portraying himself as a middle-of-the-road Republican.
This culminated in a Crist win in 2006. Despite all these advantages, it wasn’t a blowout.
Crist would win 52% to 45%. On the other hand, Democrat Alex Sink won the CFO race 53.5% to 46.5%, more than Crist. Democratic incumbent Senator Bill Nelson annihilated his opponent, Katherine Harris, and earned more than one million votes over her, winning 60% to 30%.
2006 was a big Democratic year nationwide, however. Republican president George W. Bush was deeply unpopular, as was the Iraq War at the time, so it was still notable that Crist won anyway.
CONTINUING THE BUSH LEGACY
Crist’s governorship wasn’t a huge divergence from Bush.
“If you look at Charlie Crist in 2022, he’s not super different than in early 2000s,” said Dr. Michael Binder, a professor and Director of the Public Opinion Research Laboratory at the University of North Florida.
Crist governed as a moderate conservative, but he shared a common characteristic with Jeb.
“Both Jeb and Charlie, their personalities were friendly,” said Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party. “They were willing to talk to both sides of the aisle. Again, Democrats weren’t as on guard under Charlie and Jeb. There was this working relation between legislature and Jeb, almost like a friendship between legislature and Jeb even in Democratic circles. And then you saw even in Charlie, he was so much more of a centrist and worked on both sides of the aisle and pushed some policies that were I guess Democratic in nature, even though he was still very pro-life.”
On the conservative side, he appointed some conservative justices to the state Supreme Court such as Justice Canady, who would eventually vote in favor of current Governor DeSantis’ favorable Republican congressional map and voting against an amendment to ban assault weapons in Florida. On the more liberal side in 2007, Crist persuaded Florida’s clemency board to let most felons easily regain their voting rights after they served their time. He claimed it was time to leave the “offensive minority” of states that uniformly deny ex-offenders voting rights.
“The Republican Party is so much different than it was back then,” Binder said. “There was room in the Republican Party for somebody who was pro-business but maybe not this big culture warrior and you could navigate that way. There was room for him then.”
“This is why I imagine Charlie left Republican Party,” Fried said.
As far as the power of the governor, it didn’t change much from Jeb to Charlie.
“I don’t know that he took giant steps forward as far as power consolidation in the governor’s mansion and the types of things that he was doing,” said Binder, “but he didn’t reverse that in the sense that he wasn’t delegating authority back to the legislature. He wasn’t making it easier for ballot measures to pass to the people.”
“I don’t want to call him an extension of Jeb Bush because in some ways he wasn’t, but he didn’t push the needle forward if you’re looking at power consolidation in Tallahassee. Rick Scott took some big jumps and Ron DeSantis said hold my beer, I’m really going to do some stuff,” Binder added.
There was an infamous moment when Governor Crist reached across the aisle.
“YES WE CAN”
U.S. Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, emerged as the Democratic nominee for president in 2008, besting the early favorite, then-Senator and former First Lady Hillary Clinton. With the historic economic crash of 2008, Obama tied his opponent, Republican Senator John McCain, to the policies of Republican president George W. Bush.
Obama easily won the election and carried the state of Florida by two points, getting big numbers in South Florida and also healthy numbers along the I-4 corridor from Pinellas and Hillsborough counties into Orange and Volusia. And even though he didn’t get more votes in the Suncoast counties than McCain, he came a little more than 200 votes shy of winning Sarasota County, which voted Republican for decades.
One of his first major bills Obama pushed was a major stimulus package to get out of the Great Recession. He traveled to Fort Myers to sell his stimulus plan, and Crist, then a Republican, supported the plan. Florida was going to take in significantly less revenue, and the stimulus would help fill those budgetary gaps.
A big-state Republican governor supporting the plan was big for the new president, so Mr. Obama invited Crist to introduce him at a rally to tout the stimulus.
“Mr. President,” Crist exclaimed to rallygoers on Feb. 10, 2009, “welcome to Fort Myers, Florida!”
“They called it the Recovery Act, the stimulus maybe it was better known as,” Crist told SNN. “It was [Obama’s] first trip out of Washington after getting sworn in as our president. He hugged me right after I finished the introduction at the podium, and somebody took a picture of that. And after that, my life as a Republican pretty much ended.”
Florida voters gave then-Republican Charlie Crist high marks as governor as Barack Obama ascended to the presidency. And yet, a young Republican would claim he was out of step with the GOP. All the while, an outsider was ready to take over Crist’s job.
The story of the changing Florida Republican Party continues next week in Part 7 of “Red, Purple, & Blue: A Sea Change in Florida Politics.”
Be sure to catch “Red, Purple, & Blue: A Sea Change in Florida Politics” every Sunday at 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. on SNN. You can watch all episodes on our website by hovering over “News” on the top of the page and clicking on “Politics.”
