Martinez’s Departure Puts Crist in Awkward Spot

Martinez has left the building. It’s your ball, Charlie!

Mel Martinez has shown more life in the past few days than he has in his five years as Florida’s junior senator. First he voted with eight fellow Republicans to confirm Judge Sonia Sotomayor for the Supreme Court. Then, like a certain first-term Alaska governor, he resigned. The first Cuban-American elected senator is now the first Cuban-American to leave before his term is over.

Martinez’s desertion seems to come as a surprise to the governor of his state. Gov. Charlie Crist is running for the seat Martinez was recently keeping warm. Crist will have to appoint a replacement, and even though his pandering and selling out to win the 2010 election lately seem to know no bounds, apparently even he has moral limits. Who knew? Charlie swears he’s not going to choose himself to fill the Palin-esque vacancy. So who will he pick?

Crist says he won’t choose himself to fill the Palin-esque vacancy. Uh-oh, he might be running against an incumbent.

Crist has to be careful, first and foremost, that he selects someone who will absolutely, positively not get up to Washington and decide to stay. He must be sure they would never, ever decide to run because then he’d be campaigning against an incumbent. On the other hand, they can’t hate politics so much that they won’t participate. And — oh yeah — they need to have 16 months to waste.

The order might not be that tall. In the 24 hours or so since Martinez revealed he was outta here, several names were already being bandied. One is former state attorney general Jim Smith. Smith ran unsuccessfully for governor as a Democrat in 1986, but took his loss as a signal to change parties. Now is he is a lobbyist with one of Tallahassee’s top-billing firms, Smith & Ballard, which just happens to represent the health care industry. What could be better, from a Republican point of view, than having a health care lobbyist casting votes in the Senate while Obama is pushing for reform?

There are other names in contention, but they’re mostly people who would likely want to hold the office on a continuing basis, so I would not expect Charlie to pick one of them. In other words, don’t get your hopes up, Jeb Bush.

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4 thoughts on “Martinez’s Departure Puts Crist in Awkward Spot”

  1. On a cravenly political level, it’s hard to see a downside to Charlie appointing himself. He gets about six months of calling himself Sen. Crist before electioneering starts — at which point he’s in the much stronger position because he’s running for reelection as an incumbent. This would pretty well squash his right-wing opponent in the primary.

    The the only folks this opportunism would outrage probably weren’t going to vote for him anyway. The others will have forgotten about it by Nov. 2010.

    What am I missing?

  2. “He gets about six months of calling himself Sen. Crist before electioneering starts…” Actually, Crist has been running for the Senate (and doing almost nothing else) since it became clear he wasn’t going to be V.P. One person said forget selecting an interim senator, can we just have an interim governor?

    As I said, he must be careful who he picks because of the power of incumbency should that person decide they like having “Sen.” in front of their name.

    You said it would only upset people who aren’t going to vote for Crist anyway. A lot of people aren’t going to vote for him anyway – more each day. Crist’s primary opponent, Marco Rubio, is pretty well dictating the terms of Charlie’s campaign. I’ll try to post on it soon…

  3. From the outside looking in, it appears he’s got everything to gain from appointing himself — a senator’s ability to bring home pork, the power of incumbency in running for reelection (which could effectively neutralize Rubio), official fundraising support from the GOP senatorial committee (NRSC) — and, considering the public’s short term memory, nothing to lose. Gov. Kottkamp could get to work. Everybody’s happy.

    No?

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