Charlie Crist is being crucified, or so he'd like you to think. On Friday, in an interview with The Hill Crist lamented about how lonely it is on the campaign trail as an Independent, and how he had "discovered that people he thought were friends turned out to be only Republican friends, who dropped Crist after he left the GOP."
The following day, Crist was hit with a bombshell when the lawyer for Jim Greer - the former Florida GOP Chairman and big ally of Crist who was arrested last week on six counts of fraud and corruption - said that Crist knew about the slush fund in question and had "personally signed off" on Greer diverting monies from the fund.
Crist responded to the charge yesterday on CNN's State of the Union with Candy Crowley:
CROWLEY: Governor, let me turn your attention quickly, because politics still goes on. You are running for U.S. Senate as an independent. A friend of yours, someone that you helped put in as head of the Republican Party in Florida, as you know, has been charged with fraud and money-laundering having to do with some of the finances inside the state Republican Party.
And it revolves around something called Victory Strategies, a fund that state investigators say was said was used to sort of -- used to pocket money. What do you know about that entity, about Victory Strategies?
CRIST: Well, what I know about it is only what I have read in the newspaper. You know, it is an unfortunate situation. It is very disappointing and sometimes people disappoint you. And that's what has happened here.
CROWLEY: If I could just interrupt, because the attorney for Jim Greer, who is the former RNC chief, is quoted as saying: "The governor knew about Victory Strategies from the very beginning, they all worked on it together." Is that true?
CRIST: Absolutely untrue. You know, sometimes desperate people say desperate things. And it's very sad.
As if all this were not enough, Crist was blasted by Beth Reinhard of the Miami Herald on Friday for exploiting the Gulf oil spill catastrophe for political gain. Reinhard wrote:
As oil seeped toward Florida's coast Friday, endangering the livelihoods of God-knows-how-many people in an already shattered economy, as well as God-knows-how-many turtles and dolphins and birds and all manner of wildlife, Gov. Charlie Crist took time out to hustle for cash.
"Help me fight for Florida!'' implored the fundraising appeal circulated by his U.S. Senate campaign that should have added a footnote: "and my political career.''
Florida politicians are trained sometime around kindergarten to not, under any circumstances, ask for money when other, less geographically fortunate, people are frantically buying bottled water and batteries and canned tuna as a hurricane looms. America's worst oil spill qualifies as a similarly sensitive crisis.
In fairness, the spill is going to be around for a while, and candidates can't be expected to suspend fundraising altogether. (Crist's Republican rival, Marco Rubio, went to a $1,000-per-plate fundraising luncheon in Minnesota on Friday.) But we can expect candidates not to exploit the spill in tacky campaign appeals.
"I have and will continue to do all that I can to protect our beautiful state and navigate us through the challenges ahead,'' Crist says in the appeal, followed by this clumsy segue: "As you now know our campaign is about putting people ahead of politics. We are all tired of the same old excuses and politics as usual. I need your help to carry this message to Washington.''
Ick.
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