Republican-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist had a brief, informal meeting Monday night with the Democratic Governors Association, when he swung by their box at the BCS National Championship Game in Miami.
Crist will work with the DGA if he decides to make a run for his old job, governor of Florida, in 2014.
Crist told reporters last month during a visit to Washington, D.C. that he had not yet met with the Democratic campaign arm. But he noted that he had been invited to the DGA box for yesterday’s game, when the University of Alabama routed Notre Dame University.
“I did go by the box last night,” Crist told The Daily Caller in a phone call Tuesday evening, at “the invitation I had received from the kind chairman,” Democratic Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin.
Crist said it was not a politics-heavy visit.
“Terry McAuliffe was there,” Crist said, referring to the former Democratic National Committee chairman and Virginia gubernatorial candidate, adding that they “had a nice visit.”
“And then I went back to my friends’ seats,” Crist said.
Crist said there was “not really” much talk about his potential 2014 gubernatorial run on the Democratic ticket.
“Just indirect kind of general conversation,” he said.
Should Crist decide to enter the race, he would be a frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, boasting the highest favorability rating of likely Democratic candidates, according to a December Quinnipiac poll.
But Crist said that thus far he has made “no decisions at all” on that front.
“I’m just enjoying the new year,” he said, and “letting people take their good breaks from the very intense political season we’ve just come through.”