Name: Influential Broward Democrat sees Charlie Crist and Val Demings as the way for party to win 2022 governor and Senate races
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Influential Broward Democrat sees Charlie Crist and Val Demings as the way for party to win 2022 governor and Senate races

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AdvertisementBy South Florida Sun SentinelFeb 17, 2021 at 7:00 amDemocrats could win the 2022 contests for Florida governor and U.S. Senate, Broward Mayor Steve Geller believes, with U.S. Reps. Charlie Crist and Val Demings as the party’s two candidates.Geller thinks both are likely to run next year — but doesn’t know which one will run for which office. At the top of the ballot, in effect running as a Democratic ticket, Geller said he thinks the pairing would be a winning combination.Advertisement“I believe, and I could be wrong, that Val Demings is interested in running for U.S. Senate. If she is interested in running for Senate, I believe Charlie Crist would run for governor,” Geller said. “If, on the other hand, Val is more interested in running for governor, I believe Charlie might run for U.S. Senate.”Geller in position to have a good read on Crist’s thinking.AdvertisementHe’s known Crist since their days as Florida State University students in the late 1970s, and they talk regularly. Geller was the Democratic Party leader of the Florida Senate during the first two years Crist was governor — back when Crist was a Republican — and was a close adviser to Crist during the 2014 gubernatorial campaign, when Crist ran as a Democrat and narrowly lost.“It’s not a secret that if Charlie runs, I’m with him,” Geller said.Both Crist and Demings are thinking about running statewide in 2022.Crist said in aired Jan. 31 that he’s focused on COVID-19, the economy, and helping advance President Joe Biden’s agenda.“If you ask me, ‘Have some people suggested that I should contemplate potentially running for governor next year?’ Yes, they have. And so while it doesn’t get much of my attention in my brain right now, it is something that I would be open to,” Crist said.Demings in a Feb. 2 interview that she was “keeping the door open” to running for either job.Pressed about Senate Democrats’ efforts to convince her to challenge U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., D Demings said: “Well, I certainly would not talk about any private conversations that I am having, but as I said, there is plenty of work to do in the House right now. If that work takes me to another campaign, then I’m keeping that door open.”They’re not the only Democratic candidates for the top two jobs next year, but in Geller’s view they have an enormous advantage over other potential hopefuls: name recognition. That’s a critical commodity for a statewide candidate, and one that’s very hard for almost anyone to achieve who doesn’t have enormous sums of money or who hasn’t been in the spotlight before.AdvertisementCrist was elected governor in 2006 as a Republican. He didn’t run for re-election in 2010, instead running unsuccessfully as an independent candidate for U.S. Senate. He ran for governor as a Democrat in 2014, losing to then-Gov. Rick Scott by 1% of the vote. Crist is now in his third term as a member of Congress from a St. Petersburg-based district.Demings is in her third term as a member of Congress from Central Florida.She gained extensive national attention when she was considered by Joe Biden last year as a potential running mate and acted as one of the House managers during the Senate trial of the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump, in 2020. She’s a former Orlando police chief and is married to Jerry Demings, the current Orange County mayor and former sheriff.Twice-weeklyA lunch-hour look at what's trending in Florida politics. &gt; In 2018, Geller supported former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, in the Democratic primary for governor. And, he said, “I like Nikki Fried a lot.” Fried, who as agriculture commissioner is the only statewide elected Democrat, is .On Tuesday, Fried released a one-minute video excoriating Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, and Graham uses the Twitter hashtag #TheRonFile to catalog and call attention to her scorching social media criticisms of the current governor.In a one-on-one primary, Geller said he thinks Crist, a centrist-moderate Democrat, could win a primary against state Rep. Anna Eskamani, of Orlando, who is from the party’s liberal-progressive wing.AdvertisementHowever, Geller said, a more crowded field for the nomination could result in the nomination of someone like Eskamani from the party’s progressive wing.That’s exactly what happened in 2018, when the most liberal Democrat eked out a win in a primary with four major candidates — and went on to narrowly lose the general election to Republican DeSantis.“The only way that a Bernie Sanders candidate can win Florida in a Democratic primary is if there is one candidate that the left unifies behind and two or three centrist candidates splitting the vote,” Geller said. If there are “five candidates from the center and two form the left, I just have no idea. Nobody does.”Anthony Man can be reached at or on Twitter @ Advertisement

AdvertisementBy South Florida Sun SentinelFeb 17, 2021 at 7:00 amDemocrats could win the 2022 contests for Florida governor and U.S. Senate, Broward Mayor Steve Geller believes, with U.S. Reps. Charlie Crist and Val Demings as the party’s two candidates.Geller thinks both are likely to run next year — but doesn’t know which one will run for which office. At the top of the ballot, in effect running as a Democratic ticket, Geller said he thinks the pairing would be a winning combination.Advertisement“I believe, and I could be wrong, that Val Demings is interested in running for U.S. Senate....

Influential Broward Democrat sees Charlie Crist and Val Demings as the way for party to win 2022 governor and Senate races

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