Florida Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp announced Wednesday in an email release that he is supporting Marco Rubio for Senate over his former campaign partner and boss Gov. Charlie Crist.

“Today I announce my endorsement of Marco Rubio to be Florida’s next United States Senator,” said Lt. Governor Kottkamp. “This endorsement should not be a surprise to any one. As conservative Republicans, Marco and I share the same principals – faith, family and freedom. Never before have those beliefs meant so much. I cannot in good conscience support a candidate who will go to Washington and push for passage of the Obama agenda.

In an interview with Battle ‘10, Kottkamp, now a candidate for Florida Attorney General, dismissed the idea that his endorsement was designed to distance himself from Crist, who picked the former state legislator as his running mate in 2006.

“I’ve been active in the party a long time, and I have a proven track record when I served in the legislature, so by and large, the base of the party knows that I was picked because I was a Reagan conservative, and that hasn’t changed,” Kottkamp said. “It is so important that we elect a conservative Republican that’s going to go push back against this agenda of the Obama administration. That’s what this is about.”

Kottkamp said his relationship with Crist deteriorated after the Crist left the GOP.

“We’ve been in a couple of public appearances, a couple of funerals for law enforcement officers, but we have not spoken, sat down and talked, at all since he left the party,” Kottkamp said. “Frankly, my access to the Governor’s office has — you know, they’ve done everything but changed the locks, and after today, they may do that.”

Kottkamp said Crist’s split with the party took him by surprise, and that, “he always ran as, you know, a Reagan Republican, and I think that what people believed was his philosophy.”

Politico reports that Kottkamp did not give Crist notice about his Rubio endorsement: “I gave him the same heads up that he gave me when he left the party, which is none,” Kottkamp said.