ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Charlie Crist just can’t help himself. If there’s an election — he’s not especially picky about the race, whether it's for governor, the Senate or the House, or the party, Republican, Democrat or independent, he’s tried them all — his name will be on the ballot.

The former governor of Florida, Crist has been perpetually running for one office or another for the past 25 years. But the personal stakes of his current race for Congress, in a district where he once played quarterback for his high school football team, are higher than ever.


Well known around here not just for his distinct look — the year-round Florida tan, his neatly combed crop of snow white hair — Crist has been asking Pinellas County voters for their support since he was 9 years old, helping his dad campaign for school board.

Now, after back-to-back statewide losses (first for the Senate in 2010 and then in a retry for the governor’s mansion in 2014), Crist and his critics recognize that this election will offer either some measure of redemption or deliver the final, sour note of his once-promising political career. Lose this time — the onetime Republican and independent is running as a Democrat against GOP Rep. David Jolly — and even Crist’s allies say he’s done.

"Truly, for him, this is win or go home,” said Democratic strategist Steve Schale, a Florida operative who advised Crist in his last governor’s race but isn’t involved in this campaign.

Just don’t expect Crist, who's known for his soft-spoken, polished, always-on-message style, to say as much.

“I don’t think there’s a need to speculate about that,” Crist said in an interview when asked if his campaign for the redrawn Florida’s 13th District would be his last. “I don’t think it will [be my last race] because I hope to win and run for reelection,” he added when pressed again for an answer.

Though both Crist and Jolly have deep ties to the district, insiders say Crist, the “hometown boy made good” as one voter here described him, has the home-field advantage in the race.

Crist carried Pinellas County, which completely encompasses the district, in both his 2010 and 2014 races — even while losing statewide. In fact, Crist has won Pinellas County in all of his statewide races except for his loss to then-incumbent Sen. Bob Graham in 1998.

Crist also has the upper hand when it comes to demographics and fundraising. The redrawn district has seen an influx of Democratic voters, and now includes nearly 18,000 more registered active Democrats than Republicans. But how he plays with the district’s more than 112,000 Non-Party-Affiliated, or NPA, voters remains to be seen.

Crist’s war chest had about $678,000 in mid-August compared with $294,000 cash on hand for Jolly, who is receiving zero help from the House GOP campaign arm after fallout from a heated feud with party leaders over fundraising.

But both Jolly and Schale, the Democratic strategist, speculated that more conservative cash could flow into the race closer to Election Day if Donald Trump’s campaign puts the House Republican majority in peril.

“I suspect that there will be outside Republican money that ends up here if for no other reason than there are Republicans that would love to end Charlie Crist’s career,” Schale said.

Recent polls show Trump trailing Hillary Clinton in Florida by single digits. More worrisome for Republicans and Jolly, the Democratic nominee has 51 campaign offices in the state, compared with a single office for Trump, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

While Crist is a political fixture in Florida, a trait he says makes him uniquely qualified to represent St. Petersburg in Washington, his opponents readily ding him for what they say is his love for campaigning but not much else.

“He’s never run for reelection [statewide] because the job is too hard for him. And everything that he is espousing to do, he’s had 20 years to do it and he didn’t,” Jolly said in an interview at a seafood shack across from Indian Rocks Beach.

“I’m happy to run on my record and I expect Charlie will run on his," he added. (Jolly, a former staffer to Rep. Bill Young, left Capitol Hill for K Street, lobbying for several years before running to fill the vacancy left by Young's death in 2013.)

Crist, a longtime Republican while serving as a state senator in the 1990s, attorney general and then governor, switched to an independent after falling behind Marco Rubio in the 2010 Senate race. In 2012, he declared himself a Democrat, narrowly losing to GOP Gov. Rick Scott in 2014.

“That’s a lot of experience,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.) told POLITICO with a chuckle when asked about Crist’s unusual résumé.

Becerra added: "Charlie Crist, I think, is going to prove that again, you put someone with some experience that knows how to get things done, [and] it’s a great alternative to a do-nothing Congress."

Crist is hoping his nearly lifelong connection to the district — his family moved here when he was 3 years old, his father was a local doctor for more than 55 years, and Crist was quarterback and senior class president in high school — will persuade St. Petersburg voters to send him to Washington. He said his opening came when the Florida Supreme Court last summer declared the state's congressional map unconstitutional and ordered several districts, including Jolly's, to be redrawn.

“I didn’t live in the district [before] and with the ruling, [now] I do,” Crist said from the driver’s seat of his campaign manager's Subaru, with cool air blasting after a meeting at a VFW hall without working air conditioning.

As for this latest bid for elected office, Crist added, “If you enjoy what you do, why would you stop doing it if you think that you can serve people well? And I hope that I can.”

Marc Caputo contributed to this report.