Now he has eyes on the U.S. House seat of David Jolly, who has announced that he is running for Marco Rubio’s U.S. Senate seat.
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Charlie Crist has announced his intention to run for Florida’s 13th congressional House district in 2016. He was scheduled to hold a campaign rally later in the day.
The majority opinion said that the Republican-drawn map impermissibly attached a heavily Democratic piece of St. Petersburg to a safely Democratic district across Tampa Bay, ensuring that the district now held by Jolly “was more favorable to the Republican Party”.
Jolly joins U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera and businessman Todd Wilcox in the Republican primary.
Jolly had eyed the Senate race for weeks, but a recent decision from the Florida Supreme Court may have sped up his decision-making.
The race is expected to draw national attention because it gives Democrats a chance to pick up a seat in the Republican-controlled Senate. In Pinellas, a seat that leaned a little Republican (because of a wide swath of Democrats taken out of the district), there will be an open Congressional seat for the second time in under two years.
Jolly defeated Sink, a former state chief financial officer, in a March 2014 special election after the death of Young, who served in Congress for four decades. More than $11 million was spent on that race, according to the Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit group that tracks government information. He added that his faith leads him to believe in “traditional marriage”, but that the constitution allows for both traditional and same sex marriage.
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In his statement, Jolly emphasized his anti-Obamacare stance and his criticism of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, particularly in Syria. After Crist launched his assertion Monday, Republican political commentator Ana Navarro tweeted, “Like Jason from Friday the 13th”. As part of that ruling, the court pointedly ordered changes in Jolly’s District 13 and neighboring Congressional District 14, which is represented by Tampa Democrat Kathy Castor.
