As Mitt Romney puts the South Carolina primary in his rear-view mirror and hits the accelerator in a bid to win Florida, he may discover himself crashing headlong into the bitter legacy of Charlie Crist, the former Florida governor who defected from the GOP and was soundly defeated for the U.S. Senate by Marco Rubio.
Romney’s “Charlie Crist” problem is this: Romney’s chief campaign strategist and several of his most senior campaign staff were Crist’s top political advisers — the same ones who crafted Crist’s moderate, ignore-the-tea-party strategy epitomized in Crist’s famous “hug” of President Barack Obama. That strategy led Crist, once the most popular Republican governor in the nation, to defeat.
Crist’s erstwhile political team was led by controversial GOP strategist Stuart Stevens. Stevens and partner Russ Schriefer are the principals in the high-profile Stevens & Schriefer Group consultant firm and are playing the lead role in crafting Romney’s primary and national campaign strategy.
According to the Stevens & Schriefer website, the firm had a long history with Crist, serving as chief strategists for his bids for education commissioner, attorney general, governor, and later for the U.S. Senate.
Other senior Crist political aides from his failed Senate campaign now hold key posts in Romney’s campaign. Amanda Henneberg, who had served as Crist’s press secretary, now is a spokeswoman with the Romney 2012 campaign. Likewise, Andrea Saul, who was Crist’s communications director, now is Romney’s press secretary.
The Stevens & Schriefer firm has played a central role in several GOP presidential campaigns, including Romney’s failed bid in 2008. It also holds a strong track record of winning campaigns, mainly for more moderate Republicans.
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The firm specializes in helping Blue State Republicans woo moderates, swing voters, and Democrats to help the GOP win statewide elections. Stevens & Schreifer advised Republican Chris Christie in his bid for New Jersey governor.
The firm’s appeal to the GOP conservative base, however, may be mixed at best — especially when its role in Crist’s unsuccessful 2010 Senate bid is factored in.
When former Florida House Speaker Marco Rubio announced his bid to challenge Crist for Senate in May 2009, he trailed the popular Republican governor in positive name recognition in the Sunshine State by 36 points (13 percent to 49 percent), according to the Mason-Dixon polling company. Nevertheless, Crist went on to suffer one of the worst political meltdowns in recent history.
For his Senate bid, Stevens crafted a moderate Crist message that proved very much at odds with the tea party sentiment then sweeping Florida and the nation. Many analysts believe the Stevens strategy was played out, creating a mortal wound for Crist, when he gave Obama the infamous “hug.”
It came during a Feb. 10, 2009, rally in Fort Myers in support of the president’s controversial $850 billion stimulus program. Crist joined Obama on stage, praised the plan, and physically embraced the president.
That was a defining moment for Crist and his Senate campaign: He had embraced the opposition but had ignored the party’s conservative base.
During the campaign Jeb Bush, the influential former Florida governor, gave an exclusive interview to Newsmax and declared that Crist had committed an “unforgiveable” act by supporting the Obama stimulus.
Bush’s remark triggered a downward spiral in the polls from which Crist never recovered. In April 2010, before the Republican primary vote, Crist left the Republican Party and ran as an independent. Rubio defeated him decisively in the November election.
When Crist bolted from the Republican Party, Stevens and his firm resigned from the Crist campaign, as did senior aides Saul and Henneberg.
Florida 2012: Crist vs. Rubio Déjà Vu
With Florida’s Jan. 31 primary shaping up to be a bitter and critical battle between the establishment GOP represented by Romney on one side and the Main Street/tea party Republicans who are backing Gingrich, the race looks like it could be a do-over of the bitterly contested 2010 Florida Senate race.
The primary drama may offer a replay of Crist-Rubio, with Crist’s former associate Stevens crafting the Romney message and Jose Mallea, who was Rubio’s Senate campaign manager, leading the Gingrich campaign in Florida.
For example, when a November poll briefly showed former House Speaker Gingrich leading Romney in Florida, GOP strategist Alex Castellanos tweeted sarcastically: “Don’t worry, Stuart [Stevens] will deliver [a] Crist endorsement.”
To some, the Florida race has all the markings of a repeat of the Crist-Rubio showdown. Veteran political strategist Roger Stone tells Newsmax that the Romney campaign has been “tone deaf when it comes to conservatives.”
The Miami-based Stone adds: “Stuart Stevens, while he is a smart guy, he is not a conservative. He does not come from the conservative movement, he does not understand the conservative movement.”
So far, Romney’s national campaign playbook has been eerily similar to Crist’s strategy, embracing swing, middle-of-the-road voters while keeping the GOP’s conservative base at a distance.
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The Romney campaign did not respond to a request for comment. But Gingrich has emphasized that his campaign is surrounded by conservatives, and that the GOP leadership ranks during his tenure as House speaker were filled by conservatives as well.
During an appearance on shows and in a recent debate, Gingrich trumpeted the fact that he has been a “Reagan populist conservative” and that Rubio’s former campaign manager runs his Florida campaign.
Gingrich will have to play the Rubio underdog role adroitly, however, given that the primary election is only a week away. Gingrich hasn’t run a single ad in Florida, though Romney has been barraging the state with 30-second ads for weeks. Before South Carolina, polls showed Gingrich trailing Romney in the Sunshine State.
But as the Crist-Rubio paradigm indicates, things can change quickly in Florida.
“Crist never took Rubio seriously because Rubio had no name ID,” Stone recalls. “Charlie was universally known, with a 73 percent approval, and said ‘conservative’ with every other word out of his mouth.”
But Florida voters saw through the spin and viewed Crist as too moderate for their taste.
Will Romney move more to the right after his resounding loss to Gingrich in the Palmetto State? His strategy will unfold in the days ahead, but most analysts expect Romney to focus on Gingrich’s shortcomings.
In December, the Miami Herald reported that “Charlie Crist's Marco Rubio-bashing team” was heading up the Romney campaign. The story described the Crist tactics that Stevens helped devise against Rubio as “Call him a crook and a hypocrite.”
This playbook seems to have been dusted off for implementation.
Post-South Carolina, the Romney spin already appears to be focusing on Gingrich’s ethics troubles as speaker and his role in mortgage giants Fannie and Freddie. It appears that a rerun of the Crist-Rubio fight is in full throttle.
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