4/5

Congressman Charlie Crist is a loser, there is just no other way to put it. When he was a Republican he lost the McCain VP slot to Sarah Palin, as a Independent (and sitting Governor) he lost a Senate race to Marco Rubio, and as a Democrat he lost a comeback race for Governor against Rick Scott. With so much losing, it was only a matter of time before he caught the eye of the DCCC. Thanks to a mid-cycle redistricting shakeup, Crist finally broke his streak of bad luck in 2016, winning a St. Petersburg based Congressional seat and out preforming Hillary Clinton by a whopping 0.6%. Proving once again that acting like (or in this case literally being) a moderate Republican is not some brilliant strategy for winning swing voters.

Crist's pre-Congressional career is a long mess and barely worth getting into. In summary, Crist got thrown out of the Republican party because he thanked Obama for sending stimulus money to Florida in the middle of a global economic meltdown, contrary to the customary Republican practice circa 2009, which was to spit in Obama's face an call him a Muslim. So now Democrats are stuck with the guy.

Since arriving in Congress though, Crist has proven that his ideological leanings have not changed much since switching parties. A member of the Conservative Blue Dog Caucus, Crist has voted with Republicans on xenophobic immigration policy, continuing the indefinite detention of American citizens, and a series bloated military spending bills. To be fair, Crist does not have the worst voting recored. He did break with many Blue Dogs to vote against banking deregulation, and supported lowering the voting age to 16, but you can hardly call any of these marginally progressive votes impressive. The fact is Crist will always be just one more impediment to any major progressive reform, even if he is a relatively quiet one.

Historically Republican have had an ironclad lock on the St. Petersburg area, sending Republicans to Congress uninterrupted for 60 years. However, like many metropolitan areas it has shifted towards the Democrats in the last decade, and the district now sports the lightest shade of blue. But this political change can mostly be attributed to wealthy moderate urbanites becoming turned off by the hard right-wing turn of the Republican party. Bernie Sanders got blown out of the water in FL-13 in 2016 & 2020, and even Andrew Gillum lost the district almost 2 to 1 during the 2018 Gubernatorial primary. It is hard to be optimistic about the outcome of a progressive insurgency against Crist but we would love to be proven wrong.