Charlie Crist's career as a highway billboard was embarrassing enough. But running for a U.S. Senate seat he already lost twice? Five months after he came up empty in the Florida governor's race?
This time Charlie's ego is really crusin' for a bruisin'.
Nevertheless, as I'm sure you know by now, the Pinellas County Democrat hasn't wasted any time hoisting his trial balloon. When Orlando Sentinel reporter Scott Powers asked him during a telephone interview this week if he is running for U.S. Senate in 2016, Charle replied, "Well, I have been encouraged to."
Encouraged.Either somebody's playing a joke on him, kissing up to him or hasn't thought their advice through.
The former governor -- former everything except what he wants to be -- needs to run for something, I get that. But so did Harold Stassen, Republican governor of Minnesota from 1939 to 1943. I think Charlie and Stassen would have understood each other like twin brothers.
Stassen is remembered not for any of his accomplishments as a young officeholder in the North Star State. In popular culture, his name is most identified as a perennial candidate. An election sidebar. A sad, compulsive personality in the end, who needed to throw his hat in one political ring or another.
Stassen wasn't a party switcher like Charlie. But he certainly knew how to crank up a U-Haul and read a road map. He left Minnesota and campaigned unsuccessfully for governor of Pennsylvania in 1958 and 1966, and for mayor of Philadelphia in 1959. In 1978, he moved back to Minnesota and ran a senatorial campaign for U.S. Congress but -- yup -- lost again. In 1982, he campaigned for Minnesota governor, and in 1986 for the 4th District congressional seat.
Like Charlie, Harold Stassen kept on listening to those "encouraging" voices that told him to "get in." He campaigned for the Republican Party presidential nomination in every election except 1956, 1960, and 1972. His last campaign was in 2000.
Ronald Reagan, who was seldom unkind to any fellow Republican, said of Stassen, "I don't know what Harold needs more, a win or a shrink."
Yes, 2016 is a presidential election year, when Democrats get their biggest numbers in Florida. But look what Charlie Crist faces: Even if Marco Rubio does give up his Senate seat to run for president, Charlie first will have to wade through a field of giants like U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Alan Grayson. And don't count out perhaps the Democrats' brightest rising star, U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy. In this primary, Charlie won't get away with dodging a debate, either.
On the other side of the primary, there's Marco, if he stays home. Marco handily beat Charlie the independent for the office in 2010; in 2016, he would tear Charlie the Democrat apart like a terrier on a piece of beef.
And without Rubio, there are still the Republican leading lights -- Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater, former House Speaker Will Weatherford, and U.S. Rep. Vern Buchanan. (I'm not even counting popular Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam. Putnam is the likeliest -- though not necessarily the only -- GOP candidate for governor on the 2018 horizon.)
Yes, Charlie does have name recognition. But I submit it's a Chinese-meal kind of recognition among voters -- sweet and sour and largely unsatisfying.
The big problem Charlie's got is Charlie. He won't have changed. He'll still be the tanned, silver-tongued devil who charms the pants off a crowd for the first 10 minutes, changing his position from venue to venue, depending on what "the people" want to hear -- and swearing that's what he always believed.
And like Harold Stassen, Charlie will get no closer to the Promised Land than he is now. There will be no Hollywood ending. Mr. Crist won't be going to Washington.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
