Nan Rich pushes harder to be Dems choice against Rick Scott

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Seems that former Florida Sen. Nan Rich is finally trying for that 2014 governor’s ticket she pretends to want so badly and has finally launched her campaign for realz now, positioning herself as the anti-Crist — as in former Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the only other Democratic candidate who finally announced last week, though everybody knew he was gonna.

There’s been a flurry of stories lately, including one Friday on WLRN’s South Florida Round-Up, which basically indicate that Rich will harp on what we already know will be her campaign theme: That wishy washy Charlie “Turncoat” Crist is not someone you can trust. As a former Republican governor, her supporters have said, there is no way Democrats can know Crist. You can bet folks to remind voters that he is an opportunist: A one-term Republican governor who turned independent for a Senate race he lost and only became a Democrat in 2012 to campaign for President Barack Obama. Heck, don’t you half expect him to be a Libertarian in a couple of years?

Last week, Rich’s campaign released what looks like its first video advertisement on YouTube. It’s pretty early to start airing on the networks — though you can’t tell from the TV ads against U.S. Congressman Joe Garcia (more on that later). Those are pretty expensive, anyway, and Rich and that rich when it comes to her campaign account. So maybe this is a smart way to get her message out early.

And that message is: You know Nan Rich.

“I know Nan Rich,” says one female voter after another, calling her “an extraordinary visionary,” a “champion for families” and a “merchant of hope for children and families,” which is Ladra’s persona favorite. I’m going to start calling myself a merchant of truth.

“I know Nan Rich. I’ve known her as a representative for Florida, as a Florida senator,” one woman says.

“I know Nan to have a moral compass for fairness and justice and I know Nan Rich will make an incredible governor,” says another.

The series of multi-cultural women in jackets shows that Rich is not only going hard after true Democrats who don’t trust Crist, she is going hard after women.

Both are going to go hard after every Democrat vote since the 2014 is expected to yield the first elected blue governor for the Sunshine State since Lawton Chiles won re-election in 1994. This is not, however, because Crist and Rich are such viable candidates. It is, unfortunately, because Gov. Rick Scott is such a bad one. Ladra even knows quite a few Republicans who want to vote against him. They would be hard pressed to vote for Crist, that’s for sure. So maybe Rich should be looking for those Anti-Rick Republican votes, too.

Experts and polls continue to indicate that Scott is as unpopular as they come for a sitting guv. And while some say the numbers come too early — “too early to mean jack,” said the Orlando Sentinel — a recent Public Policy Polling survey has Scott 12 points behind Crist.

“His numbers have remained basically static over the course of this year and he’ll need a big improvement over the next 13 months if he’s going to get reelected,” PPP president Dean Debnam said in a statement.

Democrats truly believe that the Governor’s Mansion is going to be theirs come next Thanksgiving and, of course, they are being more precise with their campaign, promising not to ignore the Hispanics and the Black vote, like party candidate Alex Sink did four years ago.

This race is too important. Not only on a state level but on a national level, too, as one of the most watched state races going into the 2016 presidential elections.

“We definitely feel that this is an open opportunity for Florida will be blue again,” said Miami-Dade Democratic Chairwoman Annette Taddeo, who would not say which Democrat she prefers against Scott. She did, however, put herself in the camp of those who say it would have “huge implications” for nationwide Dems in 2016.

Polls done by the party reportedly say that any of the viable Democrats beat Scott and that it doesn’t matter who goes up against him. But this is before the self-financed millionaire governor starts pumping money into his campaign, of course. So, you would think that anyone who would be seen as a truly viable candidate has to be able to raise the funds to match the paid messages aired by the other side. And Rich is not expected to bring in the bacon like Crist can.

Of course, all this is also before we know whether or not Sen. Bill Nelson — who has been politely denying rumors since at least last Spring that he is interested in the job — throws his hat in the ring (more on that later), which would change everything and make all the preceding information rather irrelevant.

As irrelevant as either a Crist or a Rich campaign would be at that point.

  Charlie Crist, Nan Rich, Rick Scott