Word: crist
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...first he has to win back some of the smaller tent, where he's been losing a number of local straw polls of Florida's conservative GOP base. Crist has let Republican fundamentalists hammer him on the stimulus - and the now famous picture of him and Obama sharing an onstage hug - but his campaign is poised now to hammer back with reminders that as Governor he led a crusade to tamp down Florida's runaway property taxes and insurance premiums. Conservatives are still apoplectic about his appointment of an African-American Democrat to the Florida Supreme Court this year...
...alienating the less impassioned Republicans who don't come out for straw polls - especially in a state with Florida's centrist and independent streak - is also risky. Crist knows they vote in primaries. They helped give him a landslide victory in the 2006 gubernatorial primary against a more conservative candidate. They also lifted John McCain, the more moderate Republican Crist backed for the presidential nomination last year, to a key Florida primary victory. (They also know, according to polls, that Crist has a better chance of defeating a Democratic candidate next fall than Rubio does.) As a result, Crist insists...
...voters. "Party activists are tremendously important," he says, "but you also have to tell your story to the Republican voters whose time is consumed by running a small business or getting their kids through school. We think they'll come out in force the more they hear who Charlie Crist is all about...
...Perhaps Crist's biggest asset is money. The conservative groundswell for Rubio has netted his campaign a surprising $1 million; Crist, however, has $5 million, which could begin raining down on his opponent early next year. After last week's Rasmussen poll, Rubio declared that as a result of "our campaign's growing momentum, voters are starting to realize that there are vast differences between me and Charlie Crist on a number of important issues." But Crist ads will question that assertion - as well as Rubio's record on matters like immigration reform and cap-and-trade policies to limit...
...Still, at this point Crist has to be careful that conservative voters don't take his attacks on Rubio as attacks on them. He also has to hope that Jeb Bush, whose work as Governor he professes to admire, doesn't decide to throw his still heavy political weight behind Rubio. In a speech to Republicans in Fort Lauderdale last month, a seemingly frustrated Crist read off a litany of his conservative stances and said, "I don't know what else you're supposed to be, except maybe angry too." And yet, if he's going to right his campaign...