Florida Representative Charlie Crist will take against Republican Governor Ron DeSantis in November after winning the Democratic gubernatorial primary in his state on Tuesday night.
DeSantis is the only candidate in the GOP primary, and his popularity among Republicans worldwide as well as in the Sunshine State is growing.
In the polls, Crist was leading Nikki Fried, the Florida Agricultural Commissioner.
He had a lot of well-known supporters going into the election on Tuesday, including Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the house.
When the pragmatic politician spent one term as Florida’s governor from 2007 to 2011, he was a Republican. He nearly lost re-election to Republican Rick Scott in 2014 after an unsuccessful run for the Senate.
For Florida’s 13th Congressional District, which he has served since 2017, he ran as a Democrat.
President Joe Biden’s successful 2020 campaign has served as a smaller-scale test run in the contest for Florida governor, despite the Democrat lost that state to Donald Trump.
He has attempted, like Biden, to present himself as a unified, non-divisive candidate who is centred on kitchen table concerns.
He has already targeted DeSantis, branding him a “barbaric, want tobe tyrant” in remarks – The Guardian on Election Day.
Fried, who represents the opposite extreme of the Democratic spectrum, momentarily gained popularity among progressives when she was elected as Florida’s only statewide official as a Democrat in 2018.
In the wake of the nation’s fury over the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision in June, Fried’s popularity seemed to increase.
She said that her fiery demeanour is the ideal fit to defeat a bombastic and culture war-focused DeSantis campaign by drawing contrasts between herself and Crist on subjects like abortion and marijuana legalisation.
A few hours before the votes closed on Tuesday, DeSantis predicted Fried would lose at a state Cabinet meeting.
She “had a chance to show some leadership and get some things done as the lone Democrat elected statewide, but she’s spent her time to essentially attempt to trash me on a daily basis,” he said.
She ought to have been able to win it right away, and DeSantis said, “I believe that’s probably why. It appears like she’s going to come up not just short, but severely short.”
But an uphill struggle is still probably in store for November.
In hypothetical contests, early polls indicate DeSantis defeating both Crist and Fried, a stratospheric jump following his tight victory for governor in 2018.
Because of his outspoken opposition to the COVID-19 policies of the Biden administration, he emerged as a rising GOP figure and has since been in the news.
Republicans all around the nation, including a sizeable portion of Trump fans, praised him for adopting conservative positions on issues relating to LGBTQ people, education, and racism.
The governor is said to have the White House in mind for 2024.
He has accumulated a substantial war fund for a state-level politician, with more than $100 million already donated to his 2022 campaign.