Despite the dog-and-pony show planned to announce Charlie Crist's Democratic gubernatorial campaign Monday in St. Petersburg, the cat is out of the bag.
Crist has officially filed paperwork to run for governor as a Democrat againstincumbent Rick Scott.
Nevertheless, Crist's show will go on at 10 a.m. in Albert Whitted Park. His campaign team is already making arrangements for a large press showing.
Lenny Curry, chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, said Friday,Charlie Crist has now officially filed to run for the position he once abandoned. When Florida needed Charlie Crist the most during difficult economic times, he ran away. If he really wants to be governor now, why did he quit the first time?
RPOF released an ad to commemorate the event: "The Top Seven Things More Surprising than Charlie Crist Running for Governor."
While he ran for statewide office five times before, all as a Republican, Crist left the GOP to run for the U.S. Senate in 2010 with no party affiliation. He joined the Democrats in 2012.
Having attended the Florida Democratic convention at the end of last month, Crist has been busy building ties with his new party. Last month, he campaigned for Democratic candidate Amanda Murphy in a special election for a vacant Florida House seat in Pasco County. Crist also backed rising Democratic star Cory Booker, who won a special election for a U.S. Senate seat in New Jersey.
Earlier in the week, he continued scrambling to build ties with his new party, including going to bat for the Democratic candidate in St. Petersburgs mayoral race. Former state Rep. Rick Kriseman reeled in Crists endorsement earlier in the election cycle. On Thursday, the former governor encouraged supporters to back Kriseman.
Please join me in helping get the vote out for my friend and St. Petersburg's next mayor, Rick Kriseman, Crist posted on Facebook.
Throughout most of Florida history, the state Constitution prohibited governors from re-election, though over the decades several former governors have tried to regain the office. Only William Bloxham won back his old job. Much like his fellow Gilded Age Democrat Grover Cleveland, the only president to serve two nonconsecutive terms, Bloxham made the ultimate political comeback. First elected in 1880, 10 years after that first run for governor Bloxham was denied renomination by the Democrats in 1884. He bounced back in 1896, becoming governor again, though, due to the Florida Constitution of 1885, he could not run for re-election in 1900.
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 and for governor throughout the 1920s failed.
Despite being the first Republican governor since Reconstruction, in 1978, 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.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com. Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423.
