Will Democrats Disinherit The Meek For Crist’s Sake? By Ed Carson Wed., May 26, 2010 8:13 AM ET Fla. Gov. Charlie Crist’s gamble to run as an independent for the U.S Senate seems to be paying off. He narrowly leads Republican Marco Rubio 33%-32.7%, according to Real Clear Politics’ poll average. Rep. Kendrick Meek, the Democratic front-runner, lags far behind at 17.3%.
Crist is hoping to follow in the footsteps of Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman. But for that strategy to succeed, he’ll need Barack Obama and the national party to disown Meek.
Lieberman narrowly lost the 2006 Democratic nomination to Ned Lamont, but he won the general election as an independent. He got just shy of 50% of the vote vs. nearly 40% for Lamont. About 10% went to the Republican Alan Schlesinger.
That latter showing tells the tale. About 70% of GOP voters backed Lieberman. The White House and the national party — knowing Schlesinger had no chance — strongly signaled its support for the pro-war Lieberman.
Crist abandoned the GOP primary when it became clear he would lose to Rubio. Now Crist’s support appears to be coming at Meek’s expense. The conservative blogosphere has assumed that as Meek became better-known, Democratic voters would come home, grinding down Crist’s support — and leaving Rubio the clear favorite.
But what if Obama and the national party make a strategic choice and essentially disown Meek? From the White House’s perspective, the pro-stimulus governor is preferable to a staunch conservative. And a Rubio loss would fit the liberal meme that Republicans foolishly nominated out-of-touch extremists.
Disinheriting Meek would be difficult, though. Unions and the left-liberal base have been in a vengeful mood, supporting serious challenges to Democratic incumbents that fail to toe the Obama-Pelosi line 100%. How likely is it that they’ll get behind an independent Republican, even if he is huggable?
Not very. The AFL-CIO endorsed Meek on Sunday.
Furthermore, the African-American Meek can probably count on a solid core of black voters in the fall. Also, with Ronald Burris not running for re-election, there will be no black U.S. senators next year if Meek doesn’t win. That would make it even harder for Obama and other Democrats to abandon him for Crist.
