Saturday, April 4, 2009

U.S. Senate Race Is Simple

A lot of attention around the blogosphere is being focused on the U.S. Senate race in Florida to replace Mel Martinez, and rightly so. Some are acting like it's a complicated thing when, in reality, it's quite simple.

1. If Charlie Crist runs, he wins. This race then falls to second place in terms of importance in Florida, behind the probable Alex Sink-Bill McCollum match-up for governor.

2. Kendrick Meek is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, but Dan Gelber has a chance to win. Money talks. Meek raised a lot. Gelber did decent. But how much of Meek's money was front-loaded and won't re-occur? It's likely this is a peak number for Meek. Gelber will likely gain on him quite a bit once the session is over and he's allowed to actually actively raise money again.

3. If Crist doesn't run, the Democrat wins. No other Republican has much of a shot against Meek or Gelber, particularly now that they have a fund-raising head start and the Republican party is consistently playing the anti-progress fool on the national stage.

Now I'm not saying that any of these things is 100%, but they are close enough to be worth wagering on if you're the betting type.

1 comment:

Abel said...

I wouldn't exactly call the race for the Democrats if Crist doesn't run. Marco Rubio, despite low name-recognition, could potentially appeal to the Hispanic, especially Cuban-American, population. And he's also said that if Crist doesn't run for re-election, he's running for gov.

Kendrick Meek isn't, I think, a very appealing candidate for most of Florida. I simply don't think Florida is a progressive enough place (using the term progressive very loosely) to elect the second African-American to the current Senate. I just don't see it happening here of all places. And so, a hypothetical Gelber vs. Rubio or Gelber vs Mack (if the race suddenly becomes more appealing for him if Crist isn't running), would yield two very different candidates and a pretty tight race, IMO.