Campaign Diaries

A month ago, it looked highly unlikely that Charlie Crist would consider jumping in his state’s open Senate race. But NRSC Chairman John Cornyn appears to have done some efficient work in convincing the Florida Governor to at least think about it. Last week, Crist himself opened the door to a senatorial run for the first time, but he added that he would not make a decision until the end of the legislative session in May.

His comments have the quite important side effect of freezing other potential Republicans candidates. Rep. Connie Mack, Rep. Vern Buchanan and former House Speaker Marco Rubio had all started planning a Senate run and reaching out to the state’s GOP establishment and to conservative activists. Yet, they are all highly unlikely to run if they have to face Crist in the primary - which means that they cannot launch their own candidacies until Crist announces whether he will run. Worse still, they would be unable to do so even if they wanted to: Few of the state’s donors and staffers would commit to these lesser-known candidates before knowing Crist’s plans.

Complicating matters is that Crist is the only candidate in either party with any kind of statewide name recognition and political networks. Others cannot afford to wait until this summer to start planning a run, hiring staffers and raising funds - but that is exactly what Republican contenders will have to do if Crist ends up passing on the Senate race, and this is why Crist’s current indecision could end up hurting his party.

It’s in this confusing context that Strategic Vision released a poll of the Senate race. Its findings are very similar to those of the Research 2000 poll conducted two weeks ago. If Crist runs, the NRSC has little to worry about; if he does not, the race would sink in the complete chaos you would expect since none of the remaining contenders have any sort of statewide name recognition.

This contrast starts at the primary stage:

• If Crist runs, he gets 54% of the Republican vote; his closest competitor (Connie Mack) would get 16%.
• If he does not run, 55% of Republican respondents say they are undecided. Then: Rep. Connie Mack leads Rep. Vern Buchanan 21% to 11%; former House Speaker Allen Bense gets 8% and another former House Speaker Marco Rubio gets 5%.

• The Democratic field looks to be as muddied as the Republican field sans Crist. 66% of respondents say they are undecided. The four candidates tested are clearly not well known by voters: Rep. Ron Klein gets 12%, Rep. Kendrick Meek gets 10%, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio gets 8% and state Senator Dan Gelber 4%.

The general election has a similar pattern. Since 20 match-ups were tested (!), I try to make things clearer with the following table. The Republican’s number comes first:

There might be a lot of undecided voters for most of these match-ups, but there are still a few things we can say.

• Not only does Charlie Crist have huge leads (between 28% and 34%), he is also hovering around 58% - a high number that makes it hard to see how Democrats could defeat him. (That does not mean that Democrats should dread the prospect of his candidacy. For Crist to run for Senate would create a highly competitive gubernatorial election, and that would have huge consequences for redistricting and for next decade’s House races.)

• Connie Mack looks to be a highly competitive competitor, as he beats all four Democrats - though one of the match-ups leaves him within the margin of error.

• Both Pam Iorio and Ron Klein have relatively good numbers, as they edge out three of the five Republicans - including Rep. Vern Buchanan. Pam Iorio’s numbers are particularly encouraging, since she is the only Democrat to hold Mack within the margin of error and to hold Crist under… 30%.

• Marco Rubio, Allen Bense and Dan Gelber: All are state legislators, and in a state as large as Florida it is not realistic to expect them to be known by a wide public - and it’s very hard to make much of their results.

• Kendrick Meek is the only contender to lose every single one of his match-ups, and that is a particularly dreadful result given that two of his opponents are state legislators. Compared to fellow Rep. Ron Klein, for instance, Meek underperforms by 12% against Bense and 13% against Rubio! That he even loses against Marco Rubio should be particularly worrisome to Meek.

It is a shame Strategic Vision did not test MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, a former congressman who is being rumored as a potential candidate. He would certainly be an intriguing candidate - and he probably has more name recognition than some of the other Republican tested by this poll.