The madness in Florida continued to rivet political junkies this week, as the odds of Gov. Charlie Crist withdrawing from the Republican U.S. Senate field and refilling as an independent continued to rise. A second poll (this one from Rasmussen) shows Crist doing pretty well in a three-way contest with Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek. Nate Silver notes, however, that the dynamics of a three-way race are not friendly to the perma-tanned governor:
[If] Crist wants to avoid falling into third place, he probably needs to start appealing to Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents almost immediately. There’s a little bit more breathing room over on that side of the aisle because Kendrick Meek is relatively unknown by the electorate: just 26 percent of the electorate have an opinion of him, according to Quinnipiac, versus 57 percent for Rubio (and 84 percent for Crist)…. But Crist will need a fairly broad amount of support from Democrats and Democratic leaners in order to have a shot in a three-way race in which Rubio will almost certainly finish in at least the mid-high 30s, and his best way to achieve that is to prevent Meek from getting traction in the first place. Having denied Meek viability, he could then tact back toward the center or the center-right come the fall.
But, this isn’t easy: the more Crist thrusts to the left after having being reborn as an independent, the more flip-floppy he’ll look. It’s quite a needle to thread and it’s possible that he’s simply waited too long to make this move.
Crist has until April 30 to make up his mind what he’s doing.
In one of the fast-approaching 2010 primaries, things are heating up in Indiana, where former Rep. John Hostettler and state senator Marlin Stutzman are tacking to the right in the GOP primary in an effort to knock off the early prohibitive front-runner for the Senate, former Sen. Dan Coats. At least one conservative pundit is predicting a Stutzman upset, and he’s gotten support from self-appointed conservative GOP litmus-tester Jim DeMint, American Conservative Union president David Keene and RedState.com’s Erick Erickson.
Meanwhile, down in Georgia, Democrats desperate for a Senate candidate got lucky, as Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond, an African-American who has won three statewide elections, filed to take on Sen. Johnny Isakson, who’s been having some health problems. Thurmond’s move should help keep Georgia’s Democratic biracial coalition intact if former Gov. Roy Barnes, who is white, beats Attorney General Thurbert Baker, who is African-American, in the gubernatorial primary. Thurmond had been mulling a race for Lieutenant Governor.
As I noted in a separate post this week, the most fascinating polling news was a Rasmussen survey in California that not only showed former Gov. Jerry Brown moving out in front of Republican Meg Whitman in the gubernatorial contest, but also indicated that Whitman’s heavy spending on ubiquitous ads may be backfiring early in the cycle. Rasmussen has also done the first public polling since Bob Ehrlich officially launched a rematch against Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley, showing a close race led narrowly by O’Malley.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs on Mondays and Fridays.
