Florida Governor Charlie Crist has continued to say he is running for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, but a new poll shows his chances of being elected are better if he instead runs as an independent candidate. A Quinnipac Poll released April 15 shows:
Charlie Crist, Independent: 32%
Marco Rubio, Republican: 30%
Kendrick Meek, Democratic: 24%
other or undecided: 14%
The source of Crist’s strength is that he is very popular among Florida Democrats. All polls of the Republican primary show Crist losing decisively to Rubio. Crist must decide which way he will run no later than April 30. Florida hasn’t elected a minor party or independent candidate to statewide office since 1916, when Prohibition Party gubernatorial nominee Sidney J. Catts was elected over his Democratic, Republican, and Socialist opponents.
Would like to Charile Crist run as Green Party candidate down there.
The semi-permanent gerrymander U.S.A. Senate is one of the most ANTI-Democracy legislative bodies in the so-called free world — due to the many, many very small below average States (many of which should never have been created).
435 / 50 = 8.7
Gee — how many States with 8 or less U.S.A. Rep. seats ???
P.R. and A.V.
#2: “Democracy” was a cussword to the Founding Fathers, who established a republic. Having a Senate comprised of two members from each state was part of the compromise that enabled the Constitution to be adopted.
James Madison wanted the Senate, like the House, to be based on population, but he obviously lost out on that.
For years, a single senator could stop a measure from becoming law, and the federal government remained quite small. But the cloture rule was adopted in 1917, and the Welfare State has developed in the years since.
That a##hole Woodrow Wilson, of course, was president in 1917.