Charlie Crist Not the First Florida Governor to Want Old Job Back With a New Party

Only in Florida ...

Former Gov. Charlie Crist is expected to announce on Monday that he will be running for his old job in 2014. Crists party changes in recent years have gotten national attention, of course, as he moved from the GOP to running for the U.S. Senate with no party affiliation in 2010 before jumping over to the Democrats at the end of last year.

As strange as it might be, Crist is not the first former Florida governor running again for his old job with a new party.

Having lost the Democratic primary in a controversial fashion, Sidney Catts was elected governor in 1916 as the candidate of the Prohibition Party. Catts quickly moved back to the Democrats, but his subsequent bids for the U.S. Senate in 1920 and for governor in 1924 and 1928 failed.

Despite being the first Republican governor since Reconstruction, eight years after he was defeated in his bid for a second term, Claude Kirk ran for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Kirk was a nonfactor in the 1978 Democratic gubernatorial primary, pulling 6 percent and placing sixth in a seven-candidate field.