The Florida primaries are over. The Democrats have chosen their candidate to try to prevent popular Governor Ron DeSantis from being reelected. Just a few minutes after the polls closed and the votes were quickly counted (a lesson other states might want to learn), the results were clear: former governor and prolific political turncoat Charlie Crist is the Democratic nominee for governor after he soundly defeated Agricultural Commissioner Nikki Fried. Fried’s cringeworthy tweets are now set to end.
Crist is not a candidate without baggage. He was a Republican for decades only to declare himself independent when it was clear he was going to lose the party’s primary for Senate in 2010. Just a couple of years later and he was endorsing Obama and changing his party affiliation to a Democrat. Time will tell if Crist will be able to change the image of a political opportunist and mount a credible challenge against DeSantis.
Besides the Democrats’ fight over the gubernatorial nomination, there were three interesting Republican congressional primaries. El American’s former correspondent Anna Paulina Luna won a heavily contested primary and will fight to turn FL-13 open seat red, the new map gives her a very good chance of getting into Congress. In FL-07 Anthony Sabatini (viewed as the most MAGA candidate) was defeated by Cory Mills, and in FL-11 the ultra-conservative challenger Laura Loomer got surprisingly close to defeating Rep. Daniel Webster.
Besides the FL-11 primary, the night was a very safe one for incumbents of both parties. Not a single Democratic incumbent faced any significant opposition and, besides Webster, all Republican Representatives easily won their respective primaries. Among them was Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, who got more than 80% of the vote in her primary and will face Anette Taddeo in one of the closest districts in the Florida congressional map.
In a year filled with upsets and close elections, the Florida primaries were unexpected in the sense that they went as expected: RINO turned DINO Charlie Crist won and all the incumbents survived.
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Daniel is a Political Science and Economics student from the University of South Florida. He worked as a congressional intern to Rep. Gus Bilirakis (FL-12) from January to May 2020. He also is the head of international analysis at Politiks // Daniel es un estudiante de Cs Políticas y Economía en la Universidad del Sur de la Florida. Trabajo como pasante legislativo para el Representate Gus Bilirakis (FL-12) desde enero hasta mayo del 2020. Daniel también es el jefe de análisis internacional de Politiks.