FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Three Democrats — Charlie Crist, Nikki Fried and Annette Taddeo — are vigorously competing for what in many ways is an unenviable job: running as the Democratic nominee against Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis.
The nominee Democrats choose in the Aug. 23 primary could become Florida’s next governor.
Six months before primary day, they’re all running behind DeSantis in public opinion polls and money. DeSantis enjoys enormous popularity among the Republican Party base in an increasing red state and has a Donald Trump-like ability to command attention and dominate the news.
Crist, Fried and Taddeo all lambaste DeSantis’ performance. All share views on major issues.
And all three are courting key Democratic constituencies. Each of the three, for example, spoke to the mid-February winter conference of the Florida LGBTQ Democrats in St. Petersburg. Each of the three condemned abortion restrictions moving through the Republican-controlled Legislature.
That leaves Democratic primary voters to choose among Crist, Fried and Taddeo based on their assessments of the candidates’ backgrounds and personalities — and who they think has the best chance to defeat DeSantis.
Many factors play into that assessment. In a party that increasingly prizes diversity, Crist is a 65-year-old white man, Fried is a 44-year-old-woman and Taddeo is a 54-year-old Hispanic woman. Fried and Taddeo are both Jewish.
Crist announced his candidacy in May 2021, Fried announced in June, and Taddeo announced in October. All had spent months running unofficially before formally entering the race.
Crist — a former Republican governor who is now a Democratic congressman — is the clear front-runner for the nomination, thanks largely to his long tenure in multiple elected offices and several statewide candidacies, making him far more familiar to voters than Fried or Taddeo.
“Right now, Charlie’s in the driver’s seat six months out,” said Chris Smith of Fort Lauderdale, a former Democratic Party leader in the Florida House and Florida Senate. He isn’t endorsing any of the candidates in the primary contest.
“It seems that Charlie Cist is the clear front-runner, solely based on his name recognition and statewide experience,” said Sean Forman, a political scientist at Barry University. “It doesn’t appear like that’s going to change.”
Even though the primary and election are months away, Forman said there’s not a large window for Fried or Taddeo to overtake Crist.
“I just don’t know what Nikki Fried can do to change the dynamics. She’s trying everything. She’s the main attack dog against everything that Governor DeSantis says or does. And she might get some social media traction, but it’s not leading to fundraising or the rise in poll numbers,” Forman said.
A Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy survey released Feb. 15 found 44% of Democrats surveyed supporting Crist, 27% Fried and 3% for Taddeo.
The survey of 400 likely Democratic primary voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
Kevin Cate, strategist for Fried’s campaign, downplayed the Mason-Dixon numbers.
Writing on Twitter, he acknowledged that “this poll sucks for every Democrat on here…. But if anyone thinks this poll bodes well for Charlie, they are very misguided.” He noted that Crist is universally well know, and Fried isn’t, giving her much more room to grow in a potential general election matchup with DeSantis.
Crist also has a financial advantage. Reports show he raised $717,000 in January and had a balance of $4.3 million in his campaign accounts as of Feb. 1.
Fried raised $313,000 in January, and had a balance of $3.6 million.
Taddeo raise $195,000 in January and had a balance of $759,000. As a state senator, Taddeo is restricted by rules prohibiting lawmakers from fundraising during a legislative session, putting her at a disadvantage to Crist and Fried.
A sign of stress in Fried’s campaign: She changed campaign managers six months before the primary. “It’ looks like disaster in that campaign,” said Sean Foreman, a political scientist at Barry University.
As they attempt to appeal to Democratic primary voters, both Fried and Taddeo have cited Crist’s Republican past.
“Let’s start with the fact that I’m a lifelong Democrat,” Fried said at a February campaign event in Oakland Park when a woman asked how she’s different from Crist. “Let’s start with the fact that I’m not going to come here today and tell you what you want to hear and then go and do something different. What you see is who you get. I have been consistent on these issues literally my entire life.”
Taddeo said when she announced she has “tremendous respect” for Crist “but this race is not about Charlie or about me. This race is about the future of Florida.” She also noted that she’s been a “lifelong Democrat.”
Republicans don’t think much of any of the potential competitors.
“Crist, Fried, and Taddeo lackluster campaigns barely resonate with their own base and are floundering statewide as they are mediocre and unaccomplished,” Helen Aguirre Ferré, executive director of the Republican Party of Florida, said via email.
Charlie Crist
Crist is currently a Democratic congressman from St. Petersburg serving his third term.
Crist, 65, has a long history of election victories — and losses.
He was the state’s Republican governor from 2007 until 2011, after serving as a Republican state senator, education commissioner and attorney general.
Crist’s transformation began in February 2009 when, as governor, he hugged Barack Obama when the new Democratic president visited the state.
Crist didn’t run for reelection in 2010. Once seen as the sure Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in 2010, Crist left the party when it became obvious he’d be defeated by Marco Rubio. He ran for Senate as an independent/no-party-affiliation candidate, losing the general election to Rubio.
In 2014, he was the Democratic nominee for governor, losing to then-Gov. Rick Scott by 1 percentage point of the vote.
Crist has far more endorsements from elected officials than either of the other candidates. In Broward County alone, he has endorsements from dozens of mayors, county commissioners, state legislators and city commissioners.
Nikki Fried
Fried, 44, is currently state agriculture commissioner and is the only Florida Democrat holding statewide office.
She was a lobbyist before she was elected. Among the causes she advocated for: medical marijuana.
The Miami native, later a Broward resident, was elected in 2018. Her platform, which she recalled recently at a community gathering in Oakland Park, was weed, weapons and water.
She promised to promote medical marijuana and cannabis cultivation, shore up problems with concealed-weapons licensing and clean up Florida’s polluted rivers and springs. Her agency, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, handles a vast list of tasks from inspecting gas pumps to administering free school lunches.
As the leading Democrat in Tallahassee, she has been one of the most outspoken critics of DeSantis, taking her message to national cable television news and building her name recognition through gas pump stickers that featured her smiling face.
Her best-known known supporter may be Fred Guttenberg, who has become a nationally known advocate for combatting gun violence since his daughter Jaime was killed in the Feb. 14, 2018, massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
She’s been endorsed by several state lawmakers and local government officials in South Florida, including state Rep. Kelly Skidmore from Palm Beach County, Robert Weinroth, a Palm Beach County commissioner currently serving as county mayor, and Patricia Good, vice chairwoman of the Broward School Board.
Annette Taddeo
Taddeo, 54, a state senator from Miami, was born in Colombia and later came to the U.S. and earned a degree in commercial Spanish from the University of north Alabama. She is the founder and CEO of LanguageSpeak, a translation service based in Miami that lists major multinational corporations and large Florida businesses as clients, including AT&T, Humana and the Calder Casino and Race Course.
She was first elected to the state Senate in 2017.
She’s a past Miami-Dade County Democratic party chairwoman and was Crist’s pick for lieutenant governor when he was the unsuccessful 2014 Democratic nominee for governor.
Taddeo, who has been endorsed by the Latino Victory Fund, would be the second Hispanic governor of the modern state after Republican Bob Martinez, who served from 1987 to 1991.
The last candidate to enter the race, she has fewest number of endorsements from other elected officials. Most are from Miami-Dade County.
———
(Information from the Orlando Sentinel was used in this report.)
———
