Florida Gov. Charlie Crist will announce in St. Petersburg Thursday afternoon whether he'll run for Senate as an independent. His campaign said Wednesday that the governor, currently a Republican, would hold a 5 p.m. "qualifying event" in a downtown park.
If Crist were to run as an unaffiliated candidate, he'd instantly become the biggest X factor in the race, playing a role without any recent precedent. But making the Senate campaign a three-way race would also lower the threshold for victory and give Marco Rubio and Kendrick Meek plenty of reason to keep focusing on their core strengths.
Rubio adviser Todd Harris told POLITICO the candidate's message would "stay exactly the same as it has been" under those circumstances. "We have spent the last year running against an opponent who can't be trusted to go to Washington and stand up to the Obama agenda. If it turns out we have to run against two candidates who fall into that category then so be it," Harris said. "Of the three, Marco will still be the only candidate who isn?t trying to get into the Senate in order to rubber stamp the Obama agenda."
A Meek strategist predicted the congressman's name ID would shoot up and his poll numbers would rise, as Democrats began to engage with the de facto start of a general election campaign. Amid all the drama on the right-of-center side of the race, Meek would be able to make the argument that while Rubio "subscribes to a rigid philosophical agenda" and Crist cares most about "his own personal ambition," Meek's been working to represent Florida's interests in Washington, the strategist suggested.
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