Gov. Charlie Crist (I-FL) is seeing to it that no matter how much the Gulf spill impacts Florida beaches, BP oil will coat the politics of the three-way Florida Senate race this summer.
Last week, Crist called a rare special session of the state legislature to consider a complete ban on offshore oil exploration in Florida waters, a move that would require a constitutional amendment Crist wants to put on the November ballot for voters to consider.
Crist says he’s in favor of the ban, a reversal from his past support of offshore drilling in Florida. He says that the shift is due to the scope of the BP spill, which Crist has been talking about for weeks now as tar balls have made their way to the Florida coast. But Crist’s political opponents — the most vocal of them Republicans — say that concern about winning the Senate race in November is more responsible for Crist’s change of heart than the spill is.
The logic makes sense: if Crist can get a measure banning offshore drilling on the ballot (something local experts say is anything but a sure thing) he could boost turnout among Democratic voters who are more likely to favor a ban. While in theory that would be a boon to his Democratic opponent in the Senate race, Rep. Kendrick Meek, Crist has run to the left ever since Marco Rubio chased him out of the Republican primary and is widely expected to seek victory in the race with the help of Democratic voters.
For his part, Crist says that he’s just striking while the iron is hot and covered in black sludge. “I feel a compelling duty to protect Florida,” Crist told reporters at the press conference last week announcing the special session, which he is calling against the will of the Republicans who control both houses of the state legislature. “I’m going to be governor for about six more months, and I think I wouldn’t be doing my duty as governor if I did not call for this special session.”
At the very least, the special session keeps oil front-and-center in Florida politics for the summer, which acts as a kind of automatic profile-booster for Crist — who as sitting Governor is the man most likely to get free press when the oil spill becomes the news. His opponents in the Senate race certainly see the upside for Crist, and have spent the past few days eviscerating him for calling the session.
The Rubio campaign has “pulled out all the stops,” as the Orlando Sentinel noted. So far, the campaign has called the special session a “political photo-op” and has suggested that nothing will come of it except a waste of taxpayer money.
The press in Florida has largely agreed with that take. “Is this political grandstanding by Crist? Absolutely,” the South Florida Sun-Sentinel‘s Michael Mayo wrote last week. “But it’s also a pretty slick move by the governor, designed to bring maximum embarrassment to a Republican establishment that has embraced the Drill Baby Drill agenda of Big Oil.”
Democrats — especially Meek — clearly want to call out Crist for making such a blatant play for their base. But they have been less unified in their grumbling about the session than the Republicans have. “What took the governor so long?” Meek said in a statement to the press, ripping Crist for what he said was the political expediency of the move. “Where was he before the spill? I’ve fought my entire life against Big Oil and against drilling off our beaches — even when it was unpopular to do so.”
But the Democratic party’s likely nominee for Governor, state Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink, was far more supportive of Crist than Meek was. “I commend the Governor for agreeing to call for a special session to ban near beach oil drilling, despite the resistance from special interests and some members of the Legislature,” Sink said in a statement.
On her Twitter feed, Sink’s office later noted that she was the “was 1st statewide leader to call for a const. amend. to ban near shore drilling.”
Crist, it would seem, has gained at least one ally in the Democratic party with the special session. And even if nothing comes of it in the end, the image of Crist taking on Republicans over their opposition to a drilling ban is likely to get him more positive feelings from Democrats in the state. And that plays into Crist’s November strategy quite nicely, thank you very much.
So regardless of what happens in the special session, Crist’s move has already been a success — oil is back on the agenda, right where Crist wants it.
