Word: florida
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...Democratic and Republican parties are about to lose control of the way their presidential candidates are chosen. Both had picked a select group of states that could elect nominees before Feb. 5, 2008. But Florida, which wasn't one of them, is now set to break the party-approved barrier and move its primary up to Jan. 29. South Carolina, which the parties picked to have the first Southern primary, says it will move its G.O.P. primary even earlier to keep that distinction. New Hampshire, scheduled for Jan. 22, requires its secretary of state to move its primary to stay...
...from the proudly partisan crusade of Crist's predecessor, who fought hard against many of those initiatives. Crist's amiable tack is even more surprising since Bush, who was limited to two terms, left office in January with approval ratings about 60% and the G.O.P. still in control of Florida's legislature. But while Crist calls Bush "America's greatest Governor," he's also aware that another famous G.O.P. statehouse occupant, California's Arnold Schwarzenegger, is prospering by trying to cut deals with Democrats. "I've got two ears and one mouth, and I try to respect that ratio," Crist...
...phone with his father Charles, who in the 1960s was the only white physician in Crist's hometown of St. Petersburg to volunteer to help sports teams at segregated, all-black high schools--and who advised his son during the Terri Schiavo spectacle in 2005, when Crist was Florida's elected attorney general. "I told Charlie, 'Look, I've seen the brain scans on that girl,'" says the elder Crist, also a Republican."'There's nothing there anymore.'" Crist backed off helping Bush in his bid to keep Schiavo on life support...
Still, Crist is learning that when you try to build bipartisan bridges, you can just as easily burn them. His $20 million stem-cell-research proposal, which he hoped would appease Democrats (by finally getting the effort moving in Florida) and conservative Republicans (by limiting embryonic-stem-cell research to the existing lines approved by President George W. Bush in 2001), has instead irked both. On other matters, such as Crist's support of gay civil unions, conservatives like his 2006 primary opponent, former state chief financial officer Tom Gallagher, have blasted him for "taking every opportunity to disagree with...
...that, Crist suggests, is precisely the point--pulling the G.O.P. mainstream back to "the more inclusive roots of the party of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan. It's important that our party grow," he says, noting that he won more of Florida's black vote (almost 20%) than any other Republican gubernatorial candidate in recent history. So far the Crist approach is working: his approval rating is at 73%. That's one more reason the presidential candidates from both parties will soon be showing up at Crist's door, where they will find a new power broker both...