Kendrick Meek, the Democratic nominee and third-place candidate in the Florida Senate race, is pushing back on a report by the Wall Street Journal that he may drop out of the three-way contest and endorse independent candidate Charlie Crist in his fight against Republican nominee Marco Rubio.
“Total nonsense!” a Meek spokesperson told me in an email today. The campaign released a statement saying Meek “laughed out loud” when he heard about the Journal story.
The paper reported that “Republican leaders” in Florida “are fretting that a deal may be in the works” between the Meek and Crist camps, which are currently battling each other for Democratic votes while Rubio surges to a huge lead in public polling. The Journal’s Stephen Moore reported a growing “GOP paranoia that Democrats may be getting ready to throw the sure loser Mr. Meek over the side.”
The logic of such a move is certainly sound from a Democrat’s perspective. The TPM Poll Average shows Rubio leading with 43.7% support, while Crist draws 28.5% and Meek 21.6%. Assuming that Crist would take all of Meek’s support if the Democratic nominee dropped out, Rubio would suddenly find himself losing to his former GOP rival instead of soaring to the nearly insurmountable lead in the three-way race he enjoys today.
But Meek dismissed the suggestion in the campaign’s statement, though for what it’s worth, he avoided any of his previous attacks on Crist while doing it. Here’s the full quote from Meek that his campaign sent over when I asked about the WSJ article:
“I’m taking a stand against the radical right. Marco Rubio has always been the Tea Party candidate and yesterday Charlie Crist says he wants to crash the Tea Party, too. I’m the only candidate who’s fighting for the middle class and I’m not going anywhere except the United States Senate,” Meek said.“If you want to stop the privatization of Social Security and Medicare, stop more tax cuts for the wealthy, stop more special interest tax breaks, stop more environmental destruction and stop more jobs being shipped overseas, I’m asking you to take a stand with me.
“Because if they want to go back to the Bush years, they’re going to have to go through this six foot three inch former state trooper.”
Evan McMorris-Santoro
Evan McMorris-Santoro has covered politics for TPM since 2009. Before that, he was a reporter at National Journal’s Hotline covering election 2008. He started his career covering local politics at newspapers in TN and his native NC.
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