With a significant fundraising advantage and overwhelming support from elected Democrats, Crist seemed well positioned to win the nomination a few months ago. Limited reliable polling has made it difficult to gauge the race ahead of Election Day or how much voter sentiment has shifted since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that a woman’s right to an abortion is not guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. But the dynamics of the race have changed significantly as voters and candidates have become clear about what is at stake in November. “I feel like Nikki Fried is gaining ground,” said Brad Coker, a Florida-based pollster with Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy. “Don’t count her out. I wouldn’t bet my house on it, but if I had $100 I found under a rock, I’d bet it on Nikki Fried.” For Fried, who stumbled out of the gates as a candidate and was slow to recover, the Dobbs decision brought new purpose to her campaign and has carried that momentum into her seat. He has hammered Crist, a former Republican governor before becoming an independent and then a Democrat, for his complicated record on abortion. He often reminds voters that Crist once considered himself “pro-life” and that he appointed a pair of justices who decided to uphold abortion restrictions. “I’ve been pro-choice my whole life,” Fried said last month during the race’s only debate. “I’ve made sure to stand by the women. Charlie can’t say the same.” Whether Fried’s push came too late remains to be seen. As of Monday, 970,000 Democrats had already voted by mail or at early voting locations (about 1.5 million Democrats voted in the 2018 primary). The barrage of criticism, however, has penetrated enough that Crist felt the need to respond on air. Throughout August, his campaign spent precious advertising dollars on a 15-second defense ad to counter Fried’s attacks. “I vetoed anti-abortion legislation to protect your right to choose, and I have a perfect record from NARAL and Planned Parenthood,” Crist says in the ad. “Nikki knows I fought for your right to choose. More importantly, now you do too.” Roe’s downfall, though maligned by Democrats, nonetheless provided much-needed tailwinds here for a party that has been reeling since losing the governor’s race to DeSantis by 32,000 votes four years ago. They watched as DeSantis used the office to push an aggressively conservative agenda and catapult himself into the upper stratosphere of GOP presidential candidates by raising an unimaginable amount of money for his re-election bid — more than $132 million as of Thursday. In the process, Republicans surpassed Democrats for the first time in the state’s registered voters and now hold a 200,000 vote advantage. Democratic lawmakers, in the minority in both chambers, were powerless as the legislature passed and DeSantis signed a ban on abortion after 15 weeks with no exceptions for rape and incest. The new law went into effect on July 1 and remains in place amid a legal challenge. But after the Dobbs decision, Democrats saw a flood of money pour into their races and a renewed energy in protests across the state. The outrage has continued as the consequences of life after Roe materialize. And last week, the ramifications of another anti-abortion law supported by DeSantis, one that requires parental consent for a minor to have an abortion, played out publicly. A court ruled that a 16-year-old Florida girl without parents was not mature enough to decide to end her pregnancy and denied her a waiver that would have allowed her to have an abortion. To be clear, Democrats here are more interested in one thing: defeating DeSantis and slowing his rise to the national stage. The back-and-forth between Crist and Fried on abortion, however, has come to encapsulate the dueling arguments for each other’s candidacy. Fried’s allies hope an upset of Crist could portend a landslide in Florida, as the state saw earlier this month when Kansas voters rejected an amendment to strip abortion rights from the state constitution. They say Fried, as a woman who won four years ago when every other Democrat running statewide in Florida lost, is uniquely positioned to capture that energy. Dobbs’ decision “was definitely a turning point,” said Kevin Cate, Fried’s top quarterback. “The intensity after that was huge and you have people looking for someone to be their champion. It’s about meeting the moment.” However, much of the Democratic establishment in Florida believes otherwise. Most elected Democrats support Crist, the candidate who carried them by 64,000 votes as the party’s gubernatorial nominee in 2014. The state’s largest labor groups have also endorsed Crist over Fried, as has Barbara Zdravecky, the former CEO of Planned Parenthood of Southwest and Central Florida, and Alex Sink, the former state finance director-elect who founded an organization that recruits and trains pro-abortion-rights Democratic women to run for office. Most said they were unfazed by Crist’s complicated history on abortion rights, focusing instead on his credible record during his three terms in the House of Representatives, while insisting his middle-of-the-road record will attract more swing voters. “To me it’s not, ‘You’re a woman, check this box, I’ll support you,’” said state Rep. Fendris Driskel, who will lead the House Democrats in Tallahassee next year. “It’s, ‘What do you bring to the table holistically?’ For me, Charlie Crist is the best person I will meet right now.” Perhaps most notably, the major groups mobilizing around abortion rights have chosen to remain neutral in the fight. State Rep. Kristen Arrington, one of the few elected officials to endorse Fried, said she would support Crist if he is the nominee, but her fellow Democrats downplayed Fried’s appeal as a fresher. “I don’t want to badmouth them. A lot of them made decisions before (Dobbs),” Arrington said. “But sometimes women can be their own worst enemy and not support each other. Nothing against male candidates because they are great allies and we can’t do it alone, but I think it’s important to have women in leadership. For too long, we’ve had men making decisions about our bodies.” Crist and Fried have exhausted nearly all of their resources trying to win the primary, much of which was spent on convincing Democratic voters about abortion. Meanwhile, DeSantis and the Florida GOP have already spent more than $10 million on digital and TV ads on the incumbent’s re-election campaign, roughly twice what Fried and Crist have spent on air time combined, according to analysis of data collected by AdImpact. Despite the limited investment in Florida so far, Democrats remain optimistic that on Wednesday, regardless of the nominee, the party and its campaign supporters will join forces to help finance a campaign against DeSantis. One potential driving factor is that Florida, for now, remains one of the most permissive abortion states in the South. But some Christian supporters have privately expressed concern that the abortion tax fight in the primaries has split the party, leading to a difficult general election. “It’s a shame that in an effort to win political office, Nikki Fried would attempt to undermine a fellow Democrat,” said Joshua Karp, chief strategist for the Crist campaign. “Democrats are fired up to defend Roe at the ballot box. The only candidate who can build this coalition is Charlie Crist, which is why so many pro-choice leaders have endorsed him.” CNN’s David Wright contributed to this story.
