One of Charlie Crist’s paid operatives, liberal Democrat Kevin Cate of Cate Communication, has just put out a laughable blog post on his website called “How Charlie Crist Won.”
Apparently, Cate, who worked on Obama’s 2008 presidential election and is probably still smoking that Amendment 2 stuff, has taken it upon himself to try to spin, and dismiss Crist’s second straight statewide political campaign loss, as only being a loss by votes.Here is Cate’s little rant. I have added my two centavos (Cents in Espanol)
Everyone knows how Charlie Crist lost: votes.
But not much has been said about how Charlie Crist won.
First, the People’s Governor willingly walked into a $100 million wall.
Rick Scott had $25 million in negative ads waiting to bully any challengers on day one and his campaign was boasting about an unprecedented, and almost entirely negative, $100 million effort.
No one on the planet, including Republicans flirting with challenging a wildly unpopular incumbent, could or would compete with that mountain of money – except Charlie Crist.
His job approval, before the onslaught of TV, was 57%.
Do you think the 2nd Amendment will be destroyed by the Biden Administration?(2)
Yeah, until people started finding out Crist was now a Democrat, and had flip-flopped on all of his past positions
That’s because he was a good governor during the toughest of times.
Hold it. During the toughest times, Charlie bailed on Florida because he said he could do more good in Washington, D.C.
Charlie Crist held nothing back.
His national book tour began with Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly. And Fox News radio. Then Stephen Colbert. And this pattern continued throughout the campaign.
He never backed away from a tough reporter or tough issue.
Yes he did. Charlie and his team would block me every chance they had, and even went as far as to boot me from a couple of their events.
On the issues, Charlie Crist was unapologetically bold.
Yeah, real bold to flip flop on every single one of his past positions.
He was ahead of polls, but right where Floridians are today on most every issue. When bystander pundits told him to tone it down, he politely and forcefully objected.
Charlie Crist gave Floridians a choice – to raise the minimum wage, make the health care law work, legalize same-sex marriage, restore civil rights, guarantee equal pay for equal work, phase out the embargo against Cuba, and properly fund K-12 and college education.
Because of Charlie Crist, Scott unambiguously moderated his Tea Party worldview.
Because of political opportunism, Crist unambiguously moderated his Tea Party, then moderate, and finally liberal worldviews.
That was, and still is, good for Florida. But it didn’t really work.
On the only two occasions when Floridians had unfiltered and equal access to the candidates, Charlie Crist won. Immediately following the #fangate debate, he was up by 12 points among those who watched the debate. And following the last statewide CNN debate, he was up 3 in his internal simulated vote.
And the simulated vote was, sadly, accurate, eventually predicting Crist’s 1% loss.
Charlie Crist put in the groundwork to win.
In areas he could afford to organize, Crist increased midterm turnout — Broward by 11.4%, Miami-Dade 7%, Palm Beach 9.3%, Hillsborough 17.1%, Osceola 28.2%, Pinellas 16%. And Orange 13.1%.
Charlie Crist also crushed every fundraising record available on his side of the aisle.
Remind us from which side that was? Was it the left, right or middle?
More than 40,000 Floridians contributed to the Charlie Crist campaign – a staggering number.
If this ended the story, Charlie Crist would have won on November 4, 2014.
However, with less than a month to go, Rick Scott changed his own rules, bailing out his campaign with a $12.8 million stimulus package. That was smart. He would have lost without it.
It allowed Scott to outspend Crist on TV by $33,452,935.
Or by 2 to 1. Or by ten Super Bowl commercials.
Towards the end, at least nine times a day and seventy times a week, voters unreachable by Crist field teams or debate coverage were inundated with $1,156 per minute worth of Scott ads, mostly negative.
It was enough. It’s the reason Rick Scott won by 1%.
It’s a damn shame, but spending obscene amounts of money to win isn’t a crime.
And for Charlie Crist, failing to defeat obscene amounts of money isn’t losing, either.
Mostly.
Cate is obviously trying to save face from his failure to deliver Crist a victory. Don’t worry Kevin, I am sure you will still be hired to work on future campaigns, no need to whine about being outspent, or whatever.
Face it. You lost. Quit your crying.
