FL D primary - St. Pete Polls/Florida Politics: Crist +33 over Fried

[Benjamin Frank]

That's not quite true. Crist admitted he raised taxes and said he would do it again if re-elected as Governor.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/andrewkaczynski/there-is-almost-nothing-charlie-crist-hasnt-flip-flopped-on

And that's why Florida had one of the highest unemployment rates ever in its history under Crist's governorship, reaching 11.7 % (which was even higher than Ted Strickland’s Ohio that was 48th in the nation in terms of job creation) compared to 9.6 % at the national level.

I think there may have been something else going on with the national economy between 2006 and 2010, beyond just an increase in Florida's auto tag fees, that might provide a better explanation of high unemployment in Florida.

Florida was one of the worst hit states by the mortgage collapse.  I think that is most if not all of the reason for the higher unemployment rate than the national average.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Once we see a poll confirming Crist or Fried is leading we can say it's competetive but last poll had DeSantis winning by 10

Technically, D's don't need the South to win the Prez, they do need Southern seats to hold onto Congress, though

[Progressive Pessimist]

I hope Nikki Fried is as used to disappointment as I am when it comes to Florida politics.

I would say that she would be better off waiting to oppose Scott in 2024, but that assumes that she even holds her current position as Agriculture Commissioner, which is a stretch. So I guess I can't blame her fro jumping right into this Sisyphean effort for both the general election and primary.

[Dereich]

I fail to see why she would "choke" hard and cause other Dems to lose down-ballot? I'm curious to know why you think Fried would be such a poor candidate in the general election?

Yeah, you're correct it's really just speculation, we can't say for sure. IMHO though I think that Fried would not be a particularly strong candidate, even with her win in 2018 (which I'm starting to believe was a fluke) for many reasons, which I covered in some posts I made in another thread (the following paragraphs are mostly just copy-pastes, maybe there's some discontinuity and I apologize for that):

Let's start with the job she's done in office so far, which has been very little really (at least which has reached the public eye). In fact, I'm quite disappointed with how little she's attempting to accomplish in her current position as Florida Agriculture Commissioner (and if she's actually attempting to accomplish things then I'd stand corrected, but in that case, she definitely needs to publicize her work). The only change I've seen whatsoever over the last two years that is because of her is that whenever I go to the gas station, I see a sticker with her face on it that says that the gas has been "Inspected and Approved for quality". That's it! All the while our orange production continues to drop. Sad!

Its not particularly fair to blame Fried for the declining orange production. Florida is still suffering from poor mass-planting habits using sour orange rootstock through the mid 90's that made most Florida orange trees vulnerable to tresteza and will periodically kill off large quantities of mature trees. Florida growers have had to sacrifice some amount of quantity to guard against the virus when they replant; nothing the government could really do to resolve the crisis.