If Crist seeks Senate seat, Florida politics gets turned upside down

[csziggy]

If Crist seeks Senate seat, Florida politics gets turned upside down
> Posted by Anthony Man on May 9, 2009 04:01 PM

If Gov. Charlie Crist eschews a second term as the state’s chief executive and decides instead to run for the U.S. Senate next year, he’ll scramble politics and careers in both parties, ignite an ideological battle over the Republican Party’s direction, and trigger a dramatic 18-month political season.

It could start as soon as Monday with a Crist announcement.

“If Governor Crist runs for the Senate, then the dominoes fall. We are going to have a tumultuous, chaotic election season,” said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Weston, a vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee.

And, said University of Florida political scientist Daniel Smith, “It flips the political establishment on its head. It’s something we haven’t seen for years.”

LOTS More: http://weblogs.sun-sentinel.com/news/politics/broward/blog/2009/05/if_crist_seeks_senate_seat_florida_politics_gets_turned_upside_down.html

[SteppingRazor]

1. I think Crist's run actually makes things a lot easier to predict, not more chaotic.

Without Crist, a Meek vs. Rubio Senate contest would be a lot harder to handicap. As it stands now, Crist takes the Senate, Sink takes the governor's seat (her most likely rival is A-G Bil McCollum who has all the charisma of an overripe onion). That creates an opening at CFO, of course, but the point is that the big vacancies fill far easier with Crist in the Senate race (and at this point, it's almost a 100-percent sure thing that he'll declare his candidacy tomorrow)