The Miami Herald blog says Charlie Crist “deflected questions” today about an independent bid. I’d say he did a little more than that:
“I’m not thinking about that today,” Crist told reporters at Alonzo and Tracy Mourning Senior High School in North Miami. “We’ll look at that later on,” Crist said of running for the U.S. Senate as an independent against Republican Marco Rubio.
Are you considering it? ”No, not really,” Crist said. The veto, he added, was not a political signal. “My veto is a signal that I thought the bill was bad,” Crist said.
He downplayed losing support from former U.S. Sen. Connie Mack and state Rep. Dean Cannon. “There’s always a price to pay for making decisions in life,” Crist said. “In my business, in the political world, you take hits sometimes.”
“The only thing that matters is the people’s poll on Election Day,” he added, declining to evaluate whether Republican leaders in Tallahassee may have misjudged the electorate’s response to SB 6. “I really don’t know,” Crist said. “You know, I didn’t analyze it politically. I analyzed it in terms of what I thought was right policy at the time for the people.”
Bet you a back wax the governor will run as an independent.