South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Does Fried have path to overcoming Crist?
With less than 10 weeks until the Democratic primary, Florida gubernatorial candidate Nikki Fried’s campaign portrayed her Thursday as a viable alternative to her much better-known competitor, Charlie Crist, with a path to victory that will defy conventional wisdom about the contest.
“Nikki is going to be the nominee,” her chief strategist, Kevin Cate, said in a video conference with reporters. “We are very, very confident.”
Crist has significant advantages: much higher name recognition among Democratic primary voters, owing to his decades in Florida politics; he consistently raises more money each month than Fried; and he’s received the lion’s share of endorsements, including from elected officials.
Crist raised about $1 million in May and Fried raised about $300,000, according to filings with the state Division of Elections. He ended the month with about $6.3 million in his campaign accounts. Fried finished the month with about $3.9 million.
Less than an hour after the Fried campaign’s declaration that she was in position to ultimately win the primary, Crist announced another endorsement, this time from the Service Employees International Union of Florida.
“Working people all across Florida have just endorsed me. And it’s not the first time. We’ve had union after union after union, and person after person after person, elected officials, leaders across this state, from Key West to Pensacola to Jacksonville to Naples. And I’m so honored and humbled by all of it,” Crist said at the endorsement announcement in West Palm Beach.
Cate said Crist’s endorsers would realize in August they’ve made a “huge mistake.”
The Fried campaign said Crist’s endorsements, financial advantage and better name recognition obscure other fundamental factors in the race — especially since voters now have a clear contrast between the two candidates.
Last week, a third candidate, Annette Taddeo, dropped out. She’s running instead for a congressional seat.
“This race is currently wide open,” Rosa Mendoza of Global Strategy Group, told reporters.
The evidence: a Global Strategy Group poll conducted for the Fried campaign shows the race at 38% for Crist and 34% for Fried, which is statistically a tie. Another 29% are undecided.
“People have made up their mind about Charlie Crist,” Cate said. “Once we introduce just the basic information about Nikki Fried, the voters flock to us. They just need to know this is a woman that’s on the ballot and that she’s won before.”
The Fried camp argues their candidate has more room to grow, because people aren’t as familiar with her as they are with Crist. “Crist is really unable to translate his name ID advantage into a strong lead in the race,” Mendoza said.
Crist has won multiple statewide elections, including the 2006 race for governor — as a Republican. He narrowly lost the 2014 gover
nor’s race, after he’d become a Democrat. He’s currently a congressman from St. Petersburg.
Voters are even more enthusiastic, Mendoza and Cate said, when they learn that she’s the only Democrat who has won a statewide election since 2012. That’s because, more than anything, Democrats are motivated by the desire to unseat Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Reality is more complex. Fried’s 2018 victory in the race for state agriculture commissioner was far different from what she’d face as the 2022 Democratic nominee for governor.
Fried won that year by just 6,733 votes out of
8,059,135 votes cast — after a poorly run campaign by her Republican opponent. Fried received 50.04% of the vote to Republican Matt Caldwell’s 49.96%.
And that was during a midterm election year when many voters were unhappy with then-President Donald Trump, hurting Republican candidates. In 2022, many voters are unhappy with President Joe Biden, which is almost certain to hurt Democratic candidates.
The Global Strategies Group poll for the Fried campaign said voters are “amped up to kick Ron DeSantis out of the Governor’s Mansion.” Among Democrats, 15% of those polled view him favorably and 77% unfavorably — with
67% “very unfavorable” toward him.
The poll of 600 likely Democratic voters, conducted by calls to landlines and cell phones and text messages to people that allowed them to opt into an online survey, was conducted June 8-13. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 4%.
Pollster ratings from FiveThirtyEight.com give Global Strategy Group a B/C rating based on the historical accuracy and methodology of its polls. And polls conducted for campaigns release only information that’s favorable to them, not specific questions or the order in which they were asked.