Marco Rubio - U.S. Senate - 2010

Tampa Tribune
Crist foe casting bigger shadow
By William March
10/25/09

Just six months ago, Gov. Charlie Crist seemed invincible.

He was sitting on stratospheric job approval ratings, at least 68 percent. The leading Democratic contender for governor, Alex Sink, didn’t want to challenge him if he ran for re-election.

In a possible Senate race, he led his Republican primary opponent, Marco Rubio, by 35 percentage points.

He looked like a shoo-in for any office he chose to run for.

That was then.

Now, Crist appears to be running scared.

His approval ratings are still high in most polls, but have dipped. Campaigning on the thinnest of shoestrings, Rubio has cut his 35-percentage-point deficit to 15 percent, a recent Quinnipiac University poll found. Increasingly, Crist seems out of tune with the hard-edged, talk-show conservatism dominating Republican Party rhetoric nationwide.

“Marco Rubio has awakened the Republican primary voters and this is a race now,” said Marian Johnson, political strategist for the Florida Chamber of Commerce.

Read the full article: http://www2.tbo.com/content/2009/oct/25/na-crist-foe-casting-bigger-shadow/