Although he was 40 minutes late for his photo op appearance at an early voting location in downtown St. Petersburg on Monday, Charlie Crist appeared to be in good spirits, despite the report that Rick Scott is about to dig deep into his checking account to flood the airwaves further with the gubernatorial election just 15 days away — to the tune of $20-$25 million.
"Well, I'm not intimidated by it," Crist said while meeting with members of the media after he and his wife Carol had voted. "I mean, they talked about spending $100 million and we decided to run anyway because people deserve a choice, and it isn't all about the money. Maybe it is to them, but it's not to me. It's all about the people."
But a group of Republican women think that some of the people that are helping fund Crist's campaign aren't all that reputable, and they were calling him out on that this morning.
At a press conference in Tampa, Republican Party of Florida chair Leslie Dougher and other officials blasted "the so-called 'people's governor'" for "standing with strip club bosses instead of Florida women," referring to cash contributions received that Crist has received from companies owned by the proprietors of strip clubs in South Florida.
"We got it from a management company as I understand it," he replied when asked about the criticism on Monday, before quickly segueing back on message about encouraging the early vote.
Pinellas and a number of other counties in Florida officially opened up their polls for early voting today, but hundreds of thousands of Floridians have already been filling out their ballots in absentee voting. And the results are definitely trending Republican, though that's not a surprise when it comes to voting by mail.
The question is of degree. More than 854,000 Floridians cast absentee ballots through Friday, with Republicans ahead of Democrats 48.6 percent to 34.5 percent. The rest came from independent voters. But Crist said he's not worried about that.
"Three of the biggest Democratic counties didn't send theirs out as early as some of the others did," he said, referring to Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade Counties. "I know it's going to be fine and I know it's a lot better than it was in 2010, and that will make all the difference in the world."
Perhaps. But the South Florida Sun-Sentinel did quote one Democratic party operative, Sean Phillippi, as saying over the weekend, "If the numbers don't change within the next week, it will be very, very troubling,"
