Gov. Charlie Crist saga stranger by the day
Tuesday, June 29, 2010 at 3:03PM 
Gov. Charlie Crist may be charming leftwingers and like-minded Democrats in his bid for a US Senate seat, technically as an independent, but he’s having a run of bad luck on a few other fronts. Twists and turns of late lend a strange air to the governor’s campaign.
Start with a donor lawsuit.
In Tuesday’s Florida Times-Union, David Hunt gives an account of former US ambassador [Bahamas] John Rood’s lawsuit against Crist. Rood, said Hunt, “is one of two lead plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit asking a judge to block Crist from using Republicans’ money to finance his U.S. Senate run.” [C-1] Hunt said the lawsuit was filed last week.
Recall Crist’s statements on March 28 during his debate with now presumed GOP nominee Marco Rubio on Mike Wallace’s Fox News show. I covered the Rubio-Crist debate, pointing out Crist “didn’t do nasty well.” I said that because Crist seemed obsessed with Republican Party spending. That was confusing because Crist handpicked the guy who was over all the spending, Jim Greer. We all know how the Greer pick turned out.
Wallace pushed Crist on the issue of Party. I wrote: “Crist denied he would run as an independent when Wallace asked him about the possibility in light of the large lead Rubio currently holds in polls. Crist said he would support the winner of the GOP primary August 24.”
Exactly 4 weeks after committing to that declaration, Crist decided to run as an independent. He was lagging in the polls and there was no way he would win grassroots support. A number of media outlets claimed Crist would return the money. Then he had the [now] trademark Crist change of heart.
My quibble with Crist is whether he planned on that indie run far longer than he admitted, though it’s a question we can’t answer.
I have made the statement Crist should step aside as governor. Why? Consider this statement in a Miami-Herald article exactly two weeks before he declared himself an indie: “With Arnold as her chief of staff, [Holly] Benson served as healthcare secretary from February 2008 until last fall, when Crist told her to leave office because she had decided to run for attorney general.”
Obviously what was good for the gander didn’t work out for that goose.
Segue to another header in Tuesday’s Times-Union: ‘Records reveal Wellcare fraud.’A whistleblower’s complaint accused a company of “fraudulent accounting as a business model, eventually stealing from $400 million to $600 million from Medicare and Medicaid programs in several states…” Including Florida. [Pg. D-1]
The plaintiff’s attorney said he hoped Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum will “raise hell with the US Attorney’s Office in Tampa for not insisting on full repayment plus damages.” The Sunshine State’s estimated loss: $300 million. All I can say is, “Go for it, Bill, because we need the dough!”
Meanwhile, Democrat candidate for governor Alex Sink, Florida’s Chief Financial Officer at present, never looked into a questionable reinsurance situation despite Wall St. analysts raising red flags. Did I mention the reinsurance program was in the Caymans? All I can say is, “Way to go, Alex. We coulda' used that dough!”
Crist handpicked the current head of Florida’s Healthcare Administration who was finally confirmed after a raucous process in the Legislature.
How Crist is handling all this no one knows. But the Crist saga gets stranger by the day. What's next is anybody's guess.–Kay B. Day
[Disclosure: In all her years of voting, Kay B. Day has publicly endorsed two candidates. One of them is Marco Rubio for the US Senate. She has contributed to his campaign, but receives no benefits whatsoever from her support or her donations.]