Should Charlie Crist, by running again for his congressional seat, live to fight another day?

Charlie Crist goes to bat for Florida seniors.

Make no mistake, Charlie Crist is the front-runner to win the 2022 Democratic Primary to be Florida’s next Governor. The polling, fundraising reports, and numbers of endorsements tell us so. POLITICO’s Gary Fineout declared Crist the front-runner last month.

But its unlikely he can defeat incumbent Republican Ron DeSantis. As a Crist acolyte whose wife is a former top-level staffer to the former Governor, it pains to me to sound like Talia Shire in Rocky IV, but Charlie can’t win. DeSantis’ campaign is a juggernaut. And it’s an election cycle in which Democrats across the country are expected to perform poorly.

So is it time for Crist, ever the pragmatist, to withdraw from the gubernatorial race and run for re-election to Congress? Should Charlie live to fight another day?

I’ve been struggling with this question for a while. Until now, my brutally honest thinking was Crist should remain in the race for two reasons:

First, the New York Giants beat the undefeated New England Patriots in the Super Bowl after David Tyree caught an Eli Manning pass with his helmet. In other words, on any given Sunday, one NFL team can beat another. And Crist, if nothing else, plays at the NFL level. Re-play Super Bowl XLII 20 times and the Patriots will win 19 of those games. But in football, like in Florida politics, there is always a strong chance of an upset.

Second, and this reason is about realpolitik, Val Demings has a better chance knocking off Marco Rubio with Crist as her de facto running mate than she does with the flailing Nikki Fried. Demings and Crist could run together like Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff did in Georgia’s runoff election in 2020. Neither Demings nor Crist can be tagged as socialists or soft on crime, so the Florida GOP playbook that worked so well in 2018 and 2020 would have to be at least updated. Demings and Crist probably would still lose, but running together, Demings might squeeze by the less-popular, less-beloved-by-the-Trumpian-base Rubio.

However, in the face of DeSantis’ breathtaking fundraising and ability to aikido his way out of any attack or criticism from Democrats or the media, there would seem to be little point in Crist functioning as a sacrificial lamb in 2022.

What’s worse is, if Crist does lose in 2022, that’s it. He’s done. For real this time. He has already lost three statewide races. It’s inconceivable that he would be a viable candidate again were he to lose a fourth.

It’s actually a gift from the political gods that Crist’s congressional district was redrawn in a way that Democrats could win it. After all, this was the seat that was held by Republican C.W. “Bill” Young for decades. Young’s protégé, David Jolly, took it over in the most expensive (to-date) congressional race in the country. Only because the Florida Supreme Court tossed the GOP Legislature’s gerrymandered lines did the Pinellas centric seat become a Democrat’s to lose.

For much of the current redistricting process, there has been a fear by both Florida and national Democrats that CD 13 would be drawn in a way to favor the GOP. Or it would be combined with portions of Democrat Kathy Castor’s district to strengthen Republican districts surrounding it. Early drafts of Florida’s new congressional districts were unfavorable enough to Tampa Bay Republicans that Crist, when he announced his run for Governor, was thought by some to be doing so because he was being drawn out of his seat.

(For the record, I disagreed with that assessment, even if early drafts of the district gave it a slight GOP-lean. We’re still talking about Charlie Crist running in Pinellas County — and without Donald Trump on the ballot).

But a funny thing happened on the way to Florida creating new district boundaries.

DeSantis entered the fray, promising to veto any map that includes what he describes as an “unconstitutional gerrymander” of North Florida, specifically Congressional District 5, which links Black communities in Jacksonville and Tallahassee. That threat all but rendered the Florida Senate’s proposed (and generous to Democrats) map of congressional districts irrelevant. In stepped the Florida House, with a two-map proposal, that gives the Governor what he wants on CD 5 and increases to 18 the number of districts Trump won in 2020. But both of the House’s maps draw CD 13 as a Democratic-leaning seat. Plan 8019 had Biden winning the district by 3.5%.

On Thursday night, Senate President Wilton Simpson said he believes the House’s maps are “constitutional” and signaled the Senate would likely agree to what the House has drawn.

Even as Gov. DeSantis continues to threaten to veto these new maps from the House, it’s still likely that CD 13 remains a Democratic-leaning seat under whatever the Florida Supreme Court agrees to or draws once the redistricting process arrives at its door.

So live to fight another day, Charlie. Say that it’s an important time in Washington (hello Ukraine!) and, in the face of so many incumbent Democrats retiring, now is the time to focus on the People’s Business in our nation’s capital. Or something like that. It won’t matter. Everyone will know what the deal is. And, to be honest, no one will think less of Charlie. They’ll see it as the smart play it is and respect his unending ability to deal himself into the game.

As for the gubernatorial race, Nikki’s gonna Nikki. I’ve given up trying to understand why she says and does the things she does (this meme?). Maybe an all-woman ticket, after the Legislature’s passage of a 15-week abortion ban, alimony reform, and the #DontSayGay bill, will see Democratic women voters turn out in droves.

In the end, DeSantis beats any comer by as much as or more than Trump did Biden in 2020. The mood in the free state of Florida is just not right for Democrats. It won’t be until the fever breaks, if it ever does.

That could be as soon as 2024, with Trump back atop the ticket, scarring the hell out of a post-Ukrainian War America. The country will again rally to defeat Trump.

And in Florida, Charlie Crist will get a shot at what he has always wanted: a U.S. Senate seat.

Here’s looking forward to Charlie Crist versus Rick Scott in 2024.