A check around the Florida blogtopia™ has produced a not outrageous selection of Democratic candidates for various jobs in 2010:

Governor: Alex Sink Update: Alex is In!

Attorney General: Dan Gelber

Chief Financial Officer: Dave Aronberg

Senate: Kendrick Meek

I’ve already talked about Ms. Sink.

Dan Gelber has been looking at the Senate race, but that was before Charlie declared his run. Gelber has the credentials for Attorney General and it positions him to make his name known statewide.

Dave Aronberg has been looking at the Attorney General race, but he has better credentials for CFO, and nowhere near the experience of Gelber. Again, he will get statewide name recognition.

Kendrick Meek essentially inherited his seat in Congress from his mother, Carrie Meek, and hasn’t faced an opponent in an election in 6 years, but he has a huge war chest and was an early supporter for Obama. Let him have a shot and see if he can campaign. I don’t think the Dems can afford a primary battle at any position and if the Republicans destroy each other in the primary, and he gets Obama’s support for turn out, he could win. It’s a long shot, but no one will know if he doesn’t move beyond his current position.

Charlie Crist probably has the Senate seat sewed up as he remains a very popular governor. Charlie is an archetypal Floridian: the moral fiber of a real estate developer with mental capacity and skin tone of an orange – what’s not to like. Marco Rubio is Rick Santorum on domestic issues and Jessie Helms on foreign policy, and has almost no name recognition outside of South Florida. To be honest, his name is probably a negative for him in the Panhandle [thanks to Lou Dobbs, among others], the most Republican part of the state.

Alex Sink can win the governor’s race. She and Bill Nelson are the only Democrats who have won state-wide races in years. It is important for her to run and to win as there will be redistricting after the 2010 census and people other than Republicans need to be represented in the process to break the 65% stranglehold the Republicans have on the state legislature.

This would open up three statewide offices for competition: Chief Financial Officer, Attorney General, and Agricultural Commissioner, if Bill McCollum and Charlie Bronson join the race, although Bronson is term-limited out of a job in any case.

There is a world of opportunity for the Democrats in 2010 in Florida, if they get their act together, because the Republican bench is pretty lame at the moment.

The Miami Herald reports that at 9:12AM EDT Gov. Charlie Crist announces bid for U.S. Senate

Just 14 minutes after Crist’s news release came out, the National Republican SenatorialCommittee endorsed him over former House Speaker Marco Rubio. It’s rare for a national party to intervene so publicly in a primary.

The McClatchy main site has a background piece that was published in anticipation of this move:

“It’s going to be like a fruit basket overturned,” said Joyce Russell, of the non-partisan Forum of the Palm Beaches, where Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink spoke Monday amid buzz about her potential gubernatorial campaign. “I like consistency. This makes me nervous.”

Besides Crist and Sink, the other statewide elected officials expected to seek new office are Attorney General Bill McCollum and Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson, both likely to run for governor.

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