The 2010 Florida Republican Senate Primary

In Florida, the focus has been on the race between Marco Rubio and Charlie Crist for the senate seat Mel Martinez vacated last year. It's only recently that there has been any noticeable comment that there is a Democrat running for the same seat.

Due to Crist jumping out of the Republican Party and also leaving the Governor's mansion there is a lot of shifting going on with other elected officials running for their own seats and some for his vacated office.

But in this state, unless the race is kicking up some serious dust, nothing significant is heard about the different offices being contested, until after the primary. After the primary there will be a lot more information on all of the candidates and what they stand for. This article is concentrating on the contest that is going to help influence the shape of our future Senate.

If this had been a more normal election year, I would have said that Charlie Crist's defection from the Republican Party would have given Marco Rubio a clear victory in the primary and an uphill battle with a nerve wracking
toss up in the general election..

However, this is an even more abnormal voting year than usual. Conventional wisdom says that a Governor who's popular more with the Independents, in this state, than with what was his own party, would say that since he ran away from his own party and became unaffiliated that he would grab a large share of the Independent vote. He would be considered be a serious challenge in the general election.

But this year isn't like any that we've seen in a long time, due to the Tea Party movement and the general dissatisfaction with what has been happening in Washington, D.C. The demographic displacement due to the especially hard hit housing market will also feed into the unpredictability of the voters this year.

According to Holly Bailey, senior political writer for Yahoo! News, the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll has 38 percent versus 30 percent Independent voters supporting the Republicans over the Democrats. This is quite a change from the 40 percent versus the 24 percent pro Democrat Party vote that helped to push Obama over the top in 2008.

According to the same article, 56 percent of those most involved in the November elections prefer the Republicans versus the 36 percent who are preferring the Democrats. But that poll is a national poll, not a Florida poll.

According to the Rasmussen website, a Florida poll, published May 17, 2010, reports that Rubio is favored by 39 percent of the voters for the general election, whereas Crist got 31 percent and Meeks only got 18 percent. There were still 12 percent who were undecided.

This is a state which has more registered Democrats than Republicans and a sizable population of unaffiliated voters. However, not all Democrats vote for the Democrat Party. Some of them vote Republican and some of them vote both sides of the aisle. The Republicans tend to either vote Republican, especially if they are pro-life, or some vote both sides of the aisle.

The Independents, who if they are pro-life, tend to vote more for Republicans than Democrats. Then there are those who vote whichever way it looks good at the time.

We also have two areas in the state which are heavily liberal: the Miami-Dade-Palm Beach Counties in South Florida and Pinellas County, which is across from Tampa. This is where Charlie Crist comes from. Those areas have usually voted for the Democrat Party. But the Miami-Dade-Palm Beach Counties were one of the hardest hit areas in the entire country, due to the housing collapse.

There are, also, two areas which tend to vote more conservatively, such as the Panhandle, which is registered heavily in the Democrat Party but tend to be Republican in the voting boot. The two senior citizen communities of Sun Center and the Villages tend a bit toward the conservative vote. The rural areas also tend to be more conservative. But even though they may involve the most acreage in Florida, they don't have the highest population.

There is also the I-4 corridor that stretches from Tampa and on past Orlando, which has been the most influential in the past few elections due to the population's tendency to swing in both directions. This has been one of the areas, during the construction boom, where a lot of new people moved in from out of the area with varying view points depending upon where they came from.

But that was then. This is now, after the failure of that boom. Florida was hit hard by the construction bust of the past two years. A lot of people lost their jobs and their homes and haven't found any replacement jobs. Some of those people are no longer there. A 12 plus percent unemployment rate is going to have an influence. We just don't know what it is yet, since this is the first election since the hit on the construction industry has relocated entire populations.

The change in demographics, the change in the economy and the change in the general attitude in this state is going to influence the outcome to the general election this fall. It's too early to tell exactly how it is going to turn out because this state has a history of turning in the opposite direction at the last minute.

Marco Rubio has been the forerunner for the primary, and he still may be the winner, especially since he doesn't appear to have any competition since Crist left the primary.

Crist won his Governorship not just through the Republican Party but he has also been popular with Independents, blacks and Latinos. This will be very interesting since Rubio, being Cuban, is popular with the Latino community and Kendrick Meeks, their Democrat Party opponent is black. This adds to the uncertainty along with the fact that Independents don't normally do very well in elections in Florida. The Tea Party is also pretty active in this state.

Rubio is backed by the Tea Party, Jim DeMint and his Senate Conservative Fund. He has also gained endorsements and backing from some powerful and very popular people, such as Jeb Bush and Rudy Giuliani. According to John McArdle of http://blogs.cqpolitics.com "National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman John Cornyn" and even Crist's own former chief of staff and appointee to Mel Martinez's seat, George LeMieux, are supporting Marco Rubio.

One of the things that will help Rubio is that Crist did exit the primary. This gives Rubio the opportunity to be more himself in his campaign instead of going extremely conservative, unless he really is that conservative. The Republican primary tends to be quite conservative according to Joshua Brett of Elections 2010 Examiner.

The Republican primaries, especially, can set up problems for the general elections since in the general election the voter turnout tends to become a bit more moderate. In the past the Democrats have taken advantage of what has been said in the Republican primary to portray their opposition as too conservative to represent our state.

It appears that Marco Rubio will be the Republican nominee, but we will see after the primary. After the primary, going into and culminating in the general election this fall is when things are going to get really interesting.
That's also when there will also be more information available on the other candidates for the other offices being contested.

Sources:

Holly Bailey, Senior Political Writer, New poll full of bad news for Democrats, (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ynews/ynews_pl2033), Yahoo! News

http://senateconservatives.com/v1/index.php?p=archives

Joshua Brett, Florida: Crist drops out of GOP Senate primary, running as independent,
April 29, (http://www.examiner.com/x-37730-Elections-2010-Examiner~y2010m4d29-Florida-Crist-drops-out-of-GOP-Senate-primary-running-as-independent), Elections 2010 Examiner

http://www.marcorubio.com/jeb-bush-stands-with-marco

Jim DeMint, SEN. JIM DeMINT: The Conservative We're Looking For - Marco Rubio,
06.16.09, (http://www.marcorubio.com/sen-jim-demint-the-conservative-were-looking-for-marco-rubio/), Marco2010 Rubio*US Senate

April 5, 2010, (http://www.mashget.com/2010/04/05/giuliani-endorses-rubio-for-senate-seat-in-fla/), Forbes

John McArdle, Rubio Shows Up In The City That Once Shunned Him, May 4, 2010 (http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/eyeon2010/florida/), http://blogs.cqpolitics.com

Election 2010: Florida Senate, May 17, 2010
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/election_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/florida/election_2010_florida_senate ,
Rasmussen reports