Sen. George LeMieux went into some detail in an interview Wednesday afternoon about his conversation with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, his erstwhile boss turned potential Independent candidate for the Senate.
“I urged him to stay in the Republican primary,” said LeMieux, a Florida Republican. “I urged him, he’s a good Republican, stay in the Republican primary, duke it out, and, uh, a long time between now and August 28.”
“So I hope that he will do that,” said LeMieux, who served as Crist’s chief of staff until being appointed to replace former Sen. Mel Martinez (who told me earlier today that he thinks Crist will run as an Independent).
I asked whether the fact he needed to do that was an indication of whether Crist, who was ahead of Marco Rubio early in the race but has since fallen well behind, is going to jump ship and run as an Independent.
“Well the stories and the media is creating such a perception, true or not, that I thought it was important for me to have that conversation,” LeMieux said. He listened more than he spoke, and I don’t want to go into all the details of our conversation.”
“It was a good conversation and I made the case that he should stay in our party and I hope that he will,” he said.
The New York Times’ Carl Hulse has a good piece on the political difficulty that all of this is putting LeMieux in.