In the latest sign of how close he is to launching a campaign to win back Florida’s governor’s office, Charlie Crist has brought aboard his nascent campaign apparatus President Obama’s finance director for Florida.
Jessica Clark, a veteran of the 2008 and 2012 Obama campaigns, has been informally consulting to Crist, reports POLITICO. Clark also has ties to Bill Nelson, for whose 2006 Senate campaign she raised money.
Republicans are expected to spend more than $100 million to hold off a challenge from Crist, so closing that fundraising gap is one of the newly-minted Democrat’s top challenges as a gubernatorial candidate.
Crist is expected to formally announce his intention some time this fall. State Democrats had hoped he would do so at their upcoming confab in late October, but it looks increasingly likely that Crist will wait until after November 1, when new campaign finance laws allowing statewide candidates to accept larger individual checks to take effect.
