Miami Herald recommends Charlie Crist for Florida governor

[In It to Win It]

Miami Herald

No paywall

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida is a place of meanness. It’s a place where dissent is muzzled, where personal rights triumph over the greater good, where winning is more important than unity — especially if that victory moves him closer to a White House run.

That’s not the Florida we had four years ago. And it’s not a Florida that voters should tolerate for the next four years. There’s a far better choice in the Nov. 8 election: Democrat Charlie Crist.

DeSantis’ first term in office has been defined by stunt after stunt and made-for-Fox-News grandstanding as he claims successive wins in the culture wars created by the politics of division that he exploits for his own gain. Meanwhile, real crises such as the lack of affordable housing and property insurance are barely addressed.

There was the recent taxpayer-funded flight of Venezuelan asylum seekers from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard. The migrants reportedly were duped into believing they would get jobs, but instead ended up on the Massachusetts vacation island, pawns in DeSantis’ thirst for attention. His willingness to upend the lives of vulnerable people for self-aggrandizing publicity appears to have also been behind his boastful announcement in August of the arrest of 20 people, ex-offenders he said voted illegally. However, those arrested have told the Herald that their county election supervisor’s office said they could cast ballots after Floridians approved the restoration of voting rights for some ex-felons.

DeSantis’ own administration was responsible for flagging ineligible voters, but didn’t. Friday, a Miami circuit court judge threw out a criminal case against one of the people DeSantis accused of committing election fraud in the 2020 election.

Crist, 66, is seasoned, smart and reasonable. He treats people with courtesy, in contrast to DeSantis, who publicly snapped at high school students for wearing masks and accuse them of engaging in “COVID theater.”

Crist has detailed plans on how to tackle the affordable-housing crisis, one of the most important quality-of-life issues in the state. He’s a consensus builder, something we have missed since DeSantis took office, and he knows intimately how government works.

There certainly are knocks against Crist. He’s been criticized as a career politician and political chameleon. And it’s true that he’s a former Republican governor-turned-independent-turned-Democratic congressman who is now running for governor again. But he says the Republican Party left him, not the other way around, a realization shared by many traditional Republicans.

But more than anything, Crist is what we need to return Florida to normalcy and common decency. He would stop the culture wars over made-up issues that have no bearing on Floridians’ everyday lives and get on with the business of governing. And no matter how much Republicans try to paint Crist as a leftist or socialist, he’s not. Instead, he’s that rarely seen breed in the Florida politics of today: a moderate.

[bahboo]

1. does Crist have a shot at this....

hell, if he added an H to his name, he'd win in a landslide...

[Timeflyer]

2. This editorial nails it--hope Miami reads and heeds it

[Chalco]

3. Miami is on the Democratic side of the state.

The Palm Beach Post, also, in a Democratic county recommended Crist.

Much of the state is Republican dominated.

I sure as hell hope that Crist wins, but not expecting it.

[In It to Win It]

4. I'm starting to think that Democratic majority in Miami is hanging on by a thread