Political Shapeshifting 101: Charlie Crist recasts views for Florida Dems

BOCA RATON, Fla. — Charlie Crist was being smothered in hugs and kisses by well-coiffed women giddy for a piece of him. For this heavily Democratic section of Palm Beach County, these were, literally, the party elders, and they sidled up to him like the prodigal son who was finally on the right — or left? — path.

Rep. Robert Wexler, D-Fla., took the mic at this small early-voting rally outside the Boca Raton Library to introduce Crist, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, by fondly recalling Crist’s one term as Florida governor from 2007 to 2011, when Crist was a Republican. “Even as a Republican,” Wexler intoned, “he was a good guy.” Somewhere behind Wexler, a voice called out, “We forgive him!” triggering a wave of laughter and applause.

That may, in fact, be the most peculiar part of Crist’s political resurrection — not that a politician rejected by his party would switch and alter some of his views to get elected but that an entire state’s political establishment would flip to either embrace or spurn him. No matter how the Florida gubernatorial race turns out (polls show it a dead heat between Crist and his successor, GOP incumbent Rick Scott) it is an assumed truth that the vast majority of people who vote for Crist would have opposed his election as a Republican in 2006 and the vast majority of people voted for Crist then now side with his opponent.

The political whiplash is best illustrated by the fact that former President Bill Clinton cut a final-week ad for Crist and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican, did one for Scott. Eight years ago last week, Giuliani was in Florida stumping for Crist, and Clinton went down to support Crist’s opponent, former U.S. Rep. Jim Davis.

“It reflects the phoniness not only of our politics but of our populaces,” said Marc Caputo, a political columnist for The Miami Herald. “It’s just human behavior. If they’re Democrats, they’ll vote for a ham sandwich with a D by its name. Same thing with Republicans if it had an R by its name. Crist was popular with Republicans as governor. But generally, [voters say] ‘I like the guy who’s on my team.’”

Crist’s circuitous path back to the governor’s mansion began when he chose to run for an open Senate seat in 2010 rather than for re-election. He lost the GOP nomination to Marco Rubio — a startling rebuff for a sitting governor — so he ran as an independent and lost to Rubio in the general election. In 2012 he became a Democrat and could, if he wins, become the nation’s first governor to be elected for a term as a member of each major party.

To get there, he had to do some political shapeshifting, which is the cornerstone of Scott’s campaign against him. Crist has changed his stances on abortion, on universal health insurance and on same-sex marriage, among other things. But one main thing that earned him the ire of Republicans was hugging President Barack Obama in 2009 at an event to tout Florida’s share of the economic stimulus plan.

Democrats, locked out of the governorship since 1998 despite having a nearly 500,000-voter edge in party affiliation, have embraced Crist for moving their way, just as Republicans have rejected him for his partisan betrayal. He has become, to many Republicans nationwide, a textbook example of the expedient politician, as proved by the fact that GOP digital guru Vincent Harris, who is managing Sen. Mitch McConnell’s re-election effort, used Crist’s about-face as a negative example last month in a political science class he teaches at Baylor University.

That antipathy began in 2010 when Crist refused to accept his loss in the Senate primary to Sen. Marco Rubio. Even as a sitting governor, such publications as the National Review Online pronounced that he deserved to be in the “Flip-Flopper’s Hall of Fame.” And this year, the Republican Governors Association posted a 2,700-word screed about Crist’s position changes.

“Charlie Crist’s first official act as a Democrat was to tell a lie about why he is now pretending to be one,” the Florida GOP said in a statement after Crist became a Democrat in late 2012. “The truth is that this self-professed, Ronald-Reagan Republican only abandoned his pro-life, pro-gun, conservative principles in 2010 after he realized that Republicans didn’t want to send him to Washington D.C. as a senator, especially after he proved he couldn’t do the job as governor.”

Florida Democrats obviously don’t wish to be thought of as hypocrites. So, when asked, many highlight the more centrist or moderate elements of Crist’s record as governor. Linda Rosenthal, president of the Boca-Delray Democratic Club, said she voted for Davis in 2006 but believes that this is “a very different Charlie Crist. Even when he was a Republican, he was a centrist Republican. He always did things like advocate for the rights of felons and for education. He always had that in him.” How does he stack up now? “He is 100 percent in line with my Democratic principles,” Rosenthal said.

Wexler, too, sounded this theme — and trotted out the defense that President Ronald Reagan switched from being a Democrat and didn’t spend his career being dogged by hypocrisy charges for doing so. Crist, Wexler said, didn’t leave the GOP, “the Republican Party left him.” (Reagan, however, changed party affiliation in 1962, before he ran for public office and ran only as a Republican.)

“Obviously, there’s a percentage of the public that support a party,” Wexler said. “But they support a party because they believe in certain principles. More often than not, the party is representing their point of view … Democrats are not just liberals or moderates. Democrats embrace a broad range of pragmatic thinking and, also, want to win.”

Crist, in response to a question from Al Jazeera at the rally, said there was nothing awkward or strange about enjoying the full-throated support of the same people who tried mightily to defeat him in 2006. “Not in the least. I feel very comfortable, perfectly comfortable.” Did he believe, as the audience implied, that he needs to be “forgiven” for his history as a Republican? “No, no, I don’t,” he said. “I’m just glad to be a Florida Democrat. Delighted.”

Also smoothing the way — and showing how badly Democrats want to win — was Davis, his 2006 opponent, who has stumped for him and showed up in Fort Lauderdale in August, after Crist won the Democratic nomination, for a press conference with him.

“When I went down there, I thought a lot about what I was going to say, because I didn’t want to say something I didn’t mean,” said Davis, now an attorney in the Tampa area. “But you look at what Charlie Crist did in the governor’s seat, and when the going got tough, he often made the right decisions. I know people violently disagree about if he’s a moderate by conviction or convenience … But even his staunchest critics can’t take away from Charlie that he’s always been a populist.”

That’s not to say that Democrats aren’t nervous about which Crist they’ll get if he wins. Many merely believe that he’d be an improvement on Scott, who has supported the GOP-run legislature’s aggressively anti-abortion laws and has refused to accept millions in Medicaid expansion aid from Washington as a protest against the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, commonly called “Obamacare.”

U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, D-Fla., who co-headlined the rally with Crist, said, “In every race there’s two people running, and you compare them. To me, there’s no choice.”

But how do you trust a politician who has wandered so broadly across the political map in just four years? Frankel laughed when asked that question and nodded, offering a version of the answer Reagan once used regarding then–Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev: Trust, but verify.

“Right now, he’s saying the right things, so I’m going to take him at his word that it’s in his heart,” she says. “He’s running against Rick Scott. That helps him a lot. But he has to say the right things. We’re hoping. I’m taking him at his word.” She looked grave as she said this but suddenly brightened. “You know what I like about Charlie? He’s a very charming guy. It’s very hard not to like him.”