Crist Calls DeSantis A Bully, Fried Vows To Campaign For All Democrats

FLORIDA — Former governor Charlie Crist, now a Democratic Congressman, will face Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in the Nov. 8 general election, according to the Associated Press.

Crist had a 60 percent to 35 percent lead over fellow Democrat Nikki Fried, the current agriculture commissioner for Florida, as of 9:25 p.m. Tuesday, state election results showed.

Florida voters sent a "message" Tuesday, Crist told supporters, and he also thanked Fried for her campaign.

"They want a governor who cares about them to solve real problems, who preserves our freedom, not a bully who divides us and takes our freedom away," Crist said in a swipe at DeSantis. "I want to thank Nikki Fried for fighting the good fight for the last four years in Tallahassee. We share the same goal: To save our state and defeat DeSantis.”

Fundamental freedoms— for rights pertaining to women, minorities and voting— are on the ballot in the general election, the Democrat said.

"This guy wants to be president of the United States and everyone knows it," Crist said. "When we defeat him on Nov. 8 that show is over. Enough."

Scroll down for real-time updates of election results. Refresh this page for updates.

From a ballroom in Miami, DeSantis told his supporters the general election will be a contest against not just Crist, but against President Joe Biden and “woke” ideology, AP reported.

“We will never ever surrender to the woke agenda," DeSantis said. "Florida is a state where woke goes to die.”

The Republican governor won his first election by less than half a percentage point, but soon became one of the most prominent figures in GOP politics. His hands-off approach to the pandemic and eagerness to lean into divides over race, gender and LGBTQ rights have resonated with many Republican voters who see DeSantis as a natural heir to former President Donald Trump.

If elected, Crist pledged he will sign an executive order on his first day protecting a woman’s right to choose; will stand up to special interests to lower electric and insurance bills; will make Election Day a statewide holiday; and will restore Andrew Warren to his position as state attorney in Hillsborough County.

Fried vowed to keep fighting and help defeat DeSantis in the general election, and told supporters she will work to put a right to privacy constitutional amendment on the 2024 ballot.

“I will campaign up and down the ballot to make sure Democrats are elected,” Fried said.

She thanked the Democratic Black Caucus for their support, and for the Black voters who campaigned in 2018 to elect her.

DeSantis has become one of the most recognizable governors in the country, already stumping for other Republican candidates across the country. The first-term governor's controversial conservative stances on everything from banning the discussion of LGBTQ issues in some school grades to his fight with Disney over gay rights has made him a top contender in GOP circles if he decides to make a run for the White House in 2024.

Voters at the polls Tuesday told Patch reporters that concerns over parental involvement in schools, gender identity, and abortion motivated them to vote, with one man calling Florida's primary election the most important ever.

"Ron DeSantis will ban all abortion in Florida if we don’t stop him. I will," Fried tweeted Tuesday.

Outside the Bradenton Area Convention Center in Palmetto, Doyel Ortiz told Patch he votes in every election, but this year is extra important because of his concerns about local schools.

“It’s always important to vote,” he said. “But it’s more important because of all we have going on with the kids and this gender (expletive) and all the teachers who want to convince kids that women can be men and men can me women. That’s evil stuff.”

Ortiz added, “And they’re taking parents rights away.”

Related:

• FL U.S. Senate Election Results: Demings Hopes To Face Rubio Nov. 8
• Aramis Ayala Will Challenge GOP Attorney General Ashley Moody In Fall
• Tax Increase OKed To Raise Teacher Pay: Pasco Co. Election Results
• Hillsborough School Tax Increase In Jeopardy: County Election Results

He also expressed his concern about gun rights being taken away and wanting to abolish abortion.

“It’s time people wake up and vote for the right candidates,” he said. “I’m against absolutely all this evil stuff going on in the world.”

Another man walking into the convention center was overheard saying, “We’ve got to get rid of the liberals. Liberals suck.”

In Sarasota, Alfredo Savigne, who voted at the Betty J. Johnson North Sarasota Public Library, told Patch he was inspired to get to the polls Tuesday because “our country is going to (expletive).”

He added, “Thank God that we have DeSantis. There’s no more democratic process. This election is the most important. We need changes, real changes, or we’re going to lose everything. This election is the most important.”

Crist Vs. Fried

Crist, a current congressman and former governor of Florida, and Fried, the current agriculture commissioner for Florida, are hoping to throw the Republican governor out of the governor's mansion.

DeSantis did not face a primary opponent Tuesday.

Crist, 66, is banking on his years of political experience, including serving as the 44th governor of Florida from 2007 to 2011 to give him an edge over Fried.

Crist grew up in St. Petersburg, graduating from St. Petersburg High School in 1974. He went on to get his law degree at the Cumberland School of Law at Sambord University in Birmingham, Alabama.

Crist began his political career as a Republican, serving in the Florida Senate from 1993 to 1999. From 2001 to 2003, he served as education commission for Florida and then as attorney general from 2003 to 2007 being elected governor.

In 2010, while still governor, Crist ran for a U.S. Senate seat. After initially leading in the polls, he was overtaken by Marco Rubio, R-Miami, and lost the Florida Republican Party's endorsement and funding.

In a controversial decision that still haunts him, Crist left the Republican party to run as an independent, but lost to Rubio, garnering 30 percent of the vote to Rubio's 49 percent.

The year after his term as governor ended in 2011, Crist switched to the Democratic party, endorsing President Barack Obama for reelection in 2012. He then announced he was running for governor again in 2013.

After losing the 2014 gubernatorial race to Rick Scott by a 1 percent margin, he ran for and was elected to Congress in 2016, defeating incumbent David Jolly by a 4 percent vote and becoming the first Democrat to represent the district since 1955. He is currently the only former governor serving in the House.

Fried, 44, was born and raised in Miami, graduating from Miami Palmetto High School before going on to get her law degree from the University of Florida in 2003.

She worked as a corporate lawyer with Holland & Knight in Jacksonville, alongside a friend and fellow UF graduate, Ashley Moody, R-Tampa, who was elected attorney general in 2018, the same year Fried made her foray into politics as Florida's commissioner of agriculture, the first woman to be elected to that position and the only Democrat a state office during the DeSantis administration.

While both candidates have condemned DeSantis' anti-woke policies, anti-abortion stance and legislation stripping public schools of all references to gender reassignment and idealogies espoused in the critical race theory, Crist touts his years of political experience while Fried is appealing to a younger generation seeking a fresh political voice.

“Experience. More than anything, it’s experience,” Crist said. “I mean, I’ve done this. I’ve been your governor before. We need somebody who goes into this job who doesn’t need on-the-job training, and I certainly don’t."

“The people of our state, the Democrats, want something new,” countered Fried.

A poll released last week by the Public Opinion Research Lab at the University of North Florida showed Fried ahead of Crist in the Democratic primary, but still 7 points behind DeSantis.
The UNF PORL Florida Statewide Poll included a random sample of 1,624 registered Florida voters from Aug. 8 to 12.

When registered Democrats were asked their choice for the Democratic nominees for Florida governor, 47 percent said they would vote for Fried in the UNF poll, while 43 percent would vote for Crist.

“Fried seems to have reversed the eight-point lead that Crist had when we asked registered Democrats about vote choice in February,” said Michael Binder, PORL faculty director and UNF professor of political science. “It’s possible that the overturning of Roe v. Wade changed the make-up of this race, and has particularly energized women that are almost 20 points more likely to vote for her.”

Also noteworthy, DeSantis had an approval rating of 50 percent, down from the 58 percent he received in the February UNF poll.

Forty-five percent said they approve strongly of the job DeSantis is doing, while only 5 percent said they approve somewhat. In contrast, 41 percent said they strongly disapprove of the job DeSantis is doing, with only 7 percent somewhat disapproving.

Fried had an approval rating of 40 percent, with 27 percent disapproving and 31 percent who don’t know.

“The polarization of DeSantis support is striking, if not altogether surprising with political agenda and media presence this past year,” Binder said. “More people seem to have an opinion about Fried since she started campaigning for governor. Her ‘don’t know’ percentagehas decreased dramatically from 49 percent in February.”

After the UNF poll was released, Samantha Ramirez, communications director for Crist's gubernatorial campaign, was quick to respond.

"The UNF poll is clearly an outlier. Between public polls and our own internal polls, Nikki Fried at this stage of the race has no path to victory barring a black swan event. And her team also knows that," Ramirez said.

She said an internal poll conducted by Change Research shows Crist with a comfortable 10-point lead over Fried, including a 17-point lead with voters who have already mailed in their ballots or voted early.

"We always knew this race would be closer than the initial polls indicated, as Fried has spent millions on paid communications, including well over a million on negative communications," Ramirez said. "The most important fact for voters continues to drive the race — Charlie Crist polls better against DeSantis in every poll of the general election."

Crist's camp said this was borne out in a poll published Monday by St. Pete Polls.

The statewide survey showed more than 59 percent of voters favored Crist with 30 percent preferring Fried for the Democratic nomination.

St. Pete Polls surveyed 1,617 likely Florida Democratic voters Aug. 20-21. The poll has a 2.4 percent margin of error.

But Fried believes her message is resonating with Florida Democrats.

She said affordability with the state's current 9.1 percent inflation rate along with a woman's right to control her own reproductive health are the top issues on voters' minds as they cast their ballots in the primary.

“They’re asking who is the best person suited to take on Ron DeSantis and we are making our closing argument that’s there’s no choice besides making sure we’re putting me at the top of that ticket,” Fried said. "Ron has spent most of the last 3 1/2 years infringing upon our rights, whether it's our right to protest, making it harder to vote, freedom of speech and now a women’s right to choose, taking away the right to privacy.”

In the meantime, Crist continues to focus on what he calls DeSantis' divisive issues intended to garner the evocative national headlines for the governor as part of his strategy for a run at the White House.

"I’m a uniter. Ron DeSantis is a divider," he said. "Florida is not Ron DeSantis’s stepping stone. Floridians deserve a governor who cares for our state. We aren't just making DeSantis a one-term governor; we're ending his 2024 presidential run. The stakes are that high in this election, Florida."

Florida Governor's Race: Primary Election 2022 Results

>> Real-time results for the governor's race are below, via the Florida Division of Elections. Be sure to refresh this page for updated results throughout the night.

Can't see the widget? Click here to open in a new tab.