Charlie Crist, world-class panderer

When it comes to political instincts, it's difficult to do worse than Charlie Crist. In 2010, Crist ran for the U.S. Senate. Crist started as a Republican before getting crushed by Marco Rubio. After that crushing, Crist switched to the Democrat Party.

Now, Crist is hoping to get crushed again, this time at the hands of Gov. Ron DeSantis. This weekend, Crist guaranteed that defeat by picking Karla Hernández-Mats, president of Miami’s United Teachers of Dade, as his running mate. Florida is fresh off its primary in which parent-oriented school boards carried the headlines by flipping 6 school boards, including the Miami-Dade Board.

In light of Tuesday's results, the natural pick would be to stick a thumb in parents' eyes. That's precisely what Crist did in picking Ms. Hernandez-Mats. Think of it as Crist's Terry McAuliffe moment. You remember that moment, right? That’s the time when McAuliffe insisted that "I don't think parents should be telling schools what they should teach." After that, McAuliffe's fate was sealed.

After that foolish statement, McAuliffe had one more idiotic moment left. He invited Randi Weingarten to rally with him the night before the election. Glenn Youngkin is now Virginia's governor.

Like Mr. McAuliffe, Ms. Hernández-Mats has publicly disdained parents. Last October she tweeted a meme likening parents who express their views at school-board meetings to serial killers and horror-movie villains and commented: “For any of you following the school board meetings, you know the craziness is real."

Mr. DeSantis championed school choice in his 2018 campaign. William Mattox of the James Madison Institute argued in these pages that "unexpected support from minority women," whom he dubbed "school-choice moms," accounted for his narrow victory. More than 100,000 low-income Florida students participated in the state’s tax-credit scholarship program at the time. Mr. DeSantis expanded Florida’s choice programs and now 150,000 students are enrolled.

Mr. Crist, who was elected Florida governor in 2006 as a Republican, supported school choice then. He ran as an independent for the Senate in 2010, then became a Democrat and changed his position when he ran for governor in 2014. The AFT has donated at least half a million dollars to his campaign this year. Unsurprisingly, Ms. Hernández-Mats strongly opposes choice. She has said private and even charter schools "shouldn’t be funded with public tax dollars because they do not have any public oversight."

It's difficult to picture a more anti-parent choice for Lt. Governor than Ms. Hernández-Mats. After Tuesday night's school board elections, Crist's pick will guarantee strong parental turnout this November. That, in turn, will guarantee Crist's defeat and Val Demings' defeat against the aforementioned Marco Rubio.

Demings is well-funded but she's made typical Democrat mistakes:

It isn't a stretch to think that Charlie Crist's pandering knows no bounds.