Charlie Crist

Charles Joseph "Charlie" Crist Jr. ( born July 24, 1956 in Altoona, Pennsylvania) is an American politician who served until the summer of 2010 the Republican Party and from January 2007 to January 2011 was the 44th Governor of Florida. Between 2003 and 2007, officiated Crist as Attorney General of this state. In the meantime, he belongs to the Democratic Party. As a democrat to Crist advertises again in 2014 for the office of governor.

Early years and political rise

Charlie Crist, son of Charlie and Nancy Lee Crist, attended St. Petersburgh High School in Florida, which he finished in 1974. He graduated from Wake Forest University and then at Florida State University. Crist received his law degree from the Cumberland School of Law of Samford University in Birmingham ( Alabama). At times he worked as a lawyer and as an assistant to U.S. Senator Connie Mack. He began his political career in 1992 in the Senate from Florida. In 1998 he applied for the post of U.S. Senator, where he clearly lost with 37:62 percent of the vote against Democratic incumbent Bob Graham. A year later brought him Governor Jeb Bush as Deputy Minister of Economic Affairs ( Department of Business and Professional Regulation) in his cabinet. Between 2000 and 2003 he was the education commissioner in Florida (Education Commissioner), an office which was then abolished and incorporated into the Ministry of Education. Since 2003, he was then Minister of Justice of this State ( Attorney General ).

Governor of Florida

In 2006 he was nominated by his party as a candidate for the upcoming gubernatorial election and subsequently elected with 52.2 percent of the vote to Democrat Jim Davis. He took office on January 2, 2007, and proved in the episode as a moderate Republican governor, who sought consensus also on party lines and found. Right at the beginning of his term Crist campaigned for the abolition of the voting machines in Florida. Several rounds of voting in the United States and particularly in Florida brought false or erroneous results; the 2000 presidential election, George W. Bush won by narrow majority of votes in Florida, although the result there determined by voting machines was only valid by the retreat of the last action of Al Gore. This happened in the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 in order to stress the fight against terror not by further disputes over the legitimacy of the President.

In contrast to most of his Republican governor colleagues in other U.S. states Crist also accepted the state of Florida allocated funding from the stimulus package adopted by U.S. President Obama in early 2009. Thus he was able the sharpest impact of the financial crisis that Florida had been hit particularly hard (keyword: Housing boom ), to mitigate the rescue of about 30,000 jobs.

As a special performance of his term of buying up large areas planted with sugar cane areas in South Florida by the " United States Sugar Company " is considered to the water balance of the more southern Everglades, for quite some time as "very endangered ecological" are classified, in to regulate future better ( rehabilitation ). However, the originally designated by the state Florida sum of $ 1.75 billion to 536 million dollars due to the financial crisis in Florida has been reduced, which has led to considerable criticism. In this context, the governor was still held to have the floor price of the bought land set far too high, so that by the sugar industry now bought up area was considered too small for effective rehabilitation of the Everglades.

At the beginning of 2010, Charlie Crist decided, instead of a second term as Governor of Florida (which is possible according to the Constitution of Florida ) seek the successor of not more candidates Mel Martinez in the U.S. Senate. End of April 2010, he announced to withdraw from the Republican Party. Background for the discharge was that the moderate Republican Marco Rubio Crist, a representative of the Tea Party movement, was inferior to the internal party primaries. He decided to compete as an independent candidate. But Rubio ultimately won clearly with 48.9 percent of the vote against Crist ( 29.7 percent) and Democrat Kendrick Meek ( 20.2 percent).

In December 2012, Crist officially changed to the Democratic Party after he had previously occurred at their nominating convention in advance of the presidential elections.

On November 1, 2013, officially announced his renewed candidacy for governor in Florida, confirming earlier speculation already a reelection as governor. In polls, he was after his announcement before the Republican incumbent Rick Scott. The gubernatorial election will be held on 4 November 2014.