After Tuesday’s elections, Florida looms as the next front in a war between moderates and conservatives that’s dividing a Republican party trying to surge toward the 2010 election.
The state’s GOP primary for U.S. Senate has all the ingredients to pack an ideological powder keg. It pits the sitting governor, Charlie Crist, who embraced President Barack Obama’s spending plan, against a scrappy former state lawmaker, Marco Rubio, who’s become a darling of the conservative movement.
And it’s all happening in the nation’s biggest swing state, which typically leans Republican but fell for Obama in the 2008 election and has five statewide seats up for grabs in 2010.
Some conservative groups active in a New York congressional race that forced out a moderate Republican say Florida is next on their agenda.
“There’s no question that the Florida race is going to be a focal point of the 2010 election cycle, with its classic David-and-Goliath matchup,” said Mike Connolly, a spokesman for the Club for Growth, an anti-tax group that spent $1 million in the last month in New York. “There’s no question that Florida is going to attract and energize conservatives.”
The group is expected to endorse Rubio in the coming weeks, raising the prospect of an anti-Crist media blitz that could cut into the governor’s fivefold fundraising advantage. FreedomWorks, a group that led many of the anti-Obama “tea party’’ rallies nationwide, is also setting its sights on Florida.
“The small government activists and the tea party movement is drawn to Rubio with great enthusiasm, and they’re going to assert themselves,” said FreedomWorks Chairman Dick Armey, the former Republican leader in Congress.
Rubio’s new online fundraising Web site, www. CharlieandObama.com, aims to capitalize on what he sees as a growing backlash against the Democratic administration. Rubio is already attracting a trickle of money from conservative political action committees, including Citizens United, the group whose anti-Hillary Clinton movie is at the center of a Supreme Court case weighing free speech against campaign finance reform.
Crist has the backing of the national Republican party, but a GOP leader said Tuesday that the party would not spend money in contested Senate primaries.
“That’s significant. It means Charlie Crist is on his own,” said Alex Burgos, a spokesman for the Rubio campaign.
Crist’s campaign said it never expected to receive party money. Polls show the governor with a double-digit lead over Rubio.
“We knew the party wouldn’t spent money on this race. We’re just thrilled to have their support,” said Crist’s campaign manager, Eric Eikenberg. “They endorsed him right out of the box based on his record.”
Democrats say the Crist-Rubio battle will leave their party’s frontrunning Senate candidate, U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek of Miami, in a stronger position to win the general election.
“Rather than fighting for the heart and soul of the Republican party, Crist and Rubio should stand up and fight for Florida,” said Florida Democratic Party spokesman Eric Jotkoff. “Rather than working on solutions, they are fighting in a Republican not-so-civil war.”
Crist defended his conservative credentials in an interview on CNN on Wednesday, noting the federal stimulus money was used to balance the budget and avert more teacher layoffs.
“You know, I, like all other Republican governors, utilized that money for the benefit of the people in my state,” he said. “And that’s what a pragmatic conservative does — a CEO, if you will, of a state does that.”
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