Direct mail roundup: Big money drubs Charlie Crist on girls’ sports, college debt forgiveness

Charlie Crist gets the thumbs up from newspapers. Will it help? Image via AP.

Anti-Charlie Crist mailers have enlisted a trans athlete and a nose-ringed, face-tattooed model to discourage voters from supporting the Democratic gubernatorial candidate — even if he didn’t vote on the issues that involve them.

The Seminole Tribe is largely financing Protect Our Values Political Committee, which wades into culture war issues with two new mailers. One stokes the concern that trans women athletes will squeeze cis women athletes out of competition, making it less likely that female-born athletes will ever come in first.

The mailer then compares the situation with what happened when Black athletes entered professional sports.

“Trans athletes are the ‘Jackie Robinson’ of our time,” the mailer reads, using a picture of Lia Thomas, a transgender athlete who posted record times for the women’s 200- and 600-yard freestyle competition. “Charlie Crist will make sure they can compete in girls’ sports in Florida.”

The Legislature in 2021 passed a law that bans trans women from competing in girls’ sports — as Crist was serving in Washington.

Protect Our Values has only been in existence since September, but it’s dropping big money on direct mail: $1.2 million worth as of Thursday.

The Ponte Vedra Beach-based committee has raised $1.6 million, chiefly from the Seminole Tribe, which gave them $1 million. The committee has also drawn $250,000 from the Washington nonprofit, the Concord Fund, in recent days. Citizens for Principled Leadership in Tallahassee and the Geo Group, a for-profit company that runs prisons, each gave the committee $125,000.

Another mailer the committee paid for raises the alarm that Crist is bailing out people like a “gender studies major” who already spent money on a face tattoo and nose ring.

“I went into debt getting my Gender Studies degree,” the mailer says, next to a black-and-white photo of a white woman with three visible piercings, even though it only shows one ear. “Thanks to Charlie Crist, taxpayers are bailing me out.”

The mailer employs some sarcasm in evoking “the crisis among college-educated Americans.”

“Paying off your own debts isn’t fair,” the mailer says, noting that even “upper class families making over six figures struggle to pay for ever-rising college tuition and comfortable housing.”

“Call Charlie Crist,” the mailer says, listing a phone number a Google search says belongs to the Florida Democratic Party. “Thank him for bailing out those with college degrees who need our help so much.”

The number leads to a recording that says the mailbox is full.

Ironically, President Joe Biden was criticized for announcing his student loan forgiveness plan without congressional input, coming days before Crist announced his retirement from Congress.

The committee’s earlier mailer tagged Crist with hiring 87,000 new IRS agents with largely debunked claims.