Rubio pulls ahead of Crist in tight GOP race in Florida
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Marco Rubio has moved past Gov. Charlie Crist in the fight for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in Florida, the latest battleground between the increasingly divided wings of the GOP.
The latest polls, announced today by Quinnipiac University, has Rubio, a former state legislator, ahead of Crist 47% to 44%. Quinnipiac surveyed 1,618 Florida voters with a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points. The survey includes 673 Republicans with a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points.
“Who would have thunk it? A former state lawmaker virtually unknown outside of his South Florida home whose challenge to an exceedingly popular sitting governor for a U.S. Senate nomination had many insiders scratching their heads. He enters the race 31 points behind and seven months later sneaks into the lead,” Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a prepared statement.
“Rubio also tops Crist on a number of other measurements from registered Republicans, who are the only folks who can vote in the primary,” Brown stated. “Rubio’s grassroots campaigning among Republican activists around the state clearly has paid off.”
Politicians have long been aware of the difference between a court party and a country party, a distinction that goes back to England as early as the 17th century. A country party reflects the views of an electorate outside the ruling centers, while a court party are those officials within the established institutions and have adopted that view of the world.
In the United States, that GOP distinction in recent months has become between office-holders and activists such as the Tea Party protesters. The country party tends to be more conservative and less willing to make the kinds of compromises that office-holders routinely make to keep the wheels of government turning.
In Florida, it is Rubio, who portrays himself as the outsider, running on an ideologically purer platform. Crist, once the darling of the GOP and a shoo-in for the Senate seat, is often denounced by his detractors as a RINO, Republican in name only.
Florida has been a hotbed of Tea Party unhappiness with the GOP and Rubio has ridden that anti-incumbent wave. In June, Quinnipiac found that Rubio trailed Crist by 31 points.
Crist minimized the latest poll numbers.
“It’s really not my concern,” Crist told reporters. “You know these are tough times for any leader. It’s challenging to lead in difficult times, but we’re going to keep doing it and keep fighting.”
The Senate seat is now held by Republican George LeMieux, who was appointed by Crist last summer to fill the rest of the term of former Sen. Mel Martinez, who retired. LeMieux, who managed Crist’s successful gubernatorial campaign in 2006, agreed not to run for the seat when he accepted the appointment.
-- Michael Muskal
Twitter.com/LATimesmuskal
