Is Charlie Crist really "the people's governor"?

Focus on Florida

There are few, if any, modern Republicans to whom I have extended the amount of confidence and goodwill as I have to Florida's current governor, Charlie Crist. This is not to say that there are not serious ideological differences between myself and Governor Crist, for there certainly are - on taxation, on the proper role of government, on public school accountability, on gay marriage, and a host of other things both big and small in importance. I did not vote for Crist in 2006 but, unlike my stance towards 99.999% of Republicans, I have actually considered voting for him should he run for re-election, and I still can not decisively say that I will or will not vote for him. Many Florida Democrats feel the same way regarding Mr. Crist. State Representative Terry Fields of Jacksonville, an African American Democrat, even went as far as to enthusiastically label him as "Florida's first black governor" (if I'm not mistaken, that comment was made after Governor Crist moved to restore the voting rights of felons who have served their time, a move decried by many Republicans including our attorney general - certainly not in the best interest of his own party, since more minorities voting means less support for Republicans.) In an era where Republicans are considered to have done a stellar job if they capture greater than 10% of the black vote, Crist won closer to 20% of that voting bloc.

Why? I can't claim to speak for everybody, but what appeals to me about the man is not just his semi-moderate politics - and compared to King Jeb before him, his politics are remarkably moderate on issues ranging from the environment to insurance regulation - but the fact that he seems to legitimately care about using government to improve the lives of his constituents. In and of itself, that's a purely liberal idea; Crist seems to recognize that the power of government can be effectively yielded to better the lives of people, whereas right-wing demagogues such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio relentlessly extol the viewpoint that it is only through minimizing government to a starved specter that people can find happiness. That philosophical difference, to me, is what differentiates Crist so markedly from many of today's Republicans.

But is Crist really, as he so often proclaims, the "people's governor?" His willingness to use government pragmatically to solve problems, his expansion of our already expansive public records laws, his drive for simplicity in government communication, and his moderate style of politics would seem to suggest "yes" in many ways. He is certainly far more of a "people's governor" than Jeb Bush ever cared to be. However, I'm far, far from being ready to canonize Mr. Crist as the "Savior of the People", and he has yet to become the first Republican for whom I'm willing to vote. And for several reasons:

• You cannot claim to be the people's governor while championing discrimination against a large group of your people, particularly a historically maligned minority. Though his stance was at first remarkably ambiguous, Crist came out late as a supporter of Amendment 2. When Florida has one of the largest LGBT populations in the nation - if I'm not mistaken, second only to California - his complete betrayal of our community on this issue was painful and will certainly not be forgotten when he seeks re-election.
• It is great to be in tune with the wishes of your people, but governing cannot be done effectively by gauging the political winds on a daily basis and setting your course based solely on their direction. Crist seems guilty of this on multiple occasions; indeed, at times it seems to be the essence of his political ideology. Florida Trend published an excellent article on this very subject in August.
• Governor Crist has rightfully drawn considerable outrage over his taxpayer-funded European junket. Florida has always been a state with strong international ties, and trips like this are only proper for a governor as he attempts to drum up support for business in his home state. But this trip was excessive, and it was an excessive waste of money just as the state's economy was beginning to go firmly down the toilet. The $430,000 of taxpayer money that Governor Crist spent on that trip could have been put to much, much better uses. If nothing else, this trip revealed that Mr. Crist is just as prone to the excesses common to other politicians; it doesn't do much to support his claim to be a different type of politician.
• Discussed somewhat in the Florida Trend article, it seems that Governor Crist has no long-term vision for the state, and he has failed in many ways to demonstrate the type of leadership needed to guide Florida through this remarkably difficult time. For one thing, Florida should have learned the lesson by now that an economy built on construction and low-wage service jobs is not sustainable, and will not be able to provide an upwardly mobile standard of living for those in our state, particularly those with college degrees (many of whom choose to leave Florida because of our low-wage economy; I'm one of only a handful of graduates from my high-tech field at the University of Florida who has chosen to stay in Florida, and absolutely nobody from my program at CMU plans on relocating to Florida, though many of them are flocking to states such as Virginia and California with more robust, more diverse economies.) Rather than the stock, failed Republican tactic of keeping taxes artificially low, what type of long-term plan has Governor Crist presented to develop an "economy of the future" for Florida? Virtually nothing at all, though he should be lauded for his attempts at greening our state and making Florida a leader in the fight against global climate change.

So all in all, if I had to grade Governor Crist on his merits as a "people's governor" at this point, I would give him somewhere between a C+ and a B- (King Jeb Bush, for comparison, would be a few notches below an F.) Perhaps I'm just remarkably naive, but I do believe that Crist is legitimate in wanting to use government to improve the lives of Floridians, although we disagree in a myriad of ways as to precisely how this should be accomplished. I think that his intentions are fundamentally good, and that is more than I can honestly say about a large chunk of today's right-wing Republicans who only seem interested in giving tax breaks to the rich and burning gays at the stake. But the road to Hell is paved with good intentions, and unless Crist develops a more structured, long-term view to governing in this difficult time, Floridians will not judge him nicely - and neither will history.