Rubio does have some interesting facets to his numbers. His campaign indicates he raised $144,000 through online donations, and contributors come from all 50 states. These numbers show a donor base that has clearly not reached its potential to give. Federal law limits campaign donations to $2,400 per person or political action committee for the primary and general elections. So most of Rubio’s supporters could give “again and again and again.”

Of course, if Crist reports $3 million this quarter, Rubio has to spend time asking “again and again and again,” while Crist can work to expand his donor base and reach out to more people.

The real problem

A recent poll indicated that Rubio can compete very well with Crist, polling in a virtual tie with the governor among Republicans who know both of them. But only about 2/5ths of Republicans in Florida have even heard of Rubio. And it will take a lot of money to raise that number substantially.

Florida has ten media markets where Rubio will have to buy advertising, including three of the top 20 in the nation. We are among the most expensive states in the country, and Crist will have enough money at his disposal to swamp Rubio on television.

To further add to Rubio’s problem, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has endorsed Crist, adding most of the national political action committees to Crist’s side of the ledger. Crist, as sitting governor, can also soften Rubio’s very strong base of groups on Tallahassee.

Rubio’s campaign is doing its best to make this sow’s ear look like a silk purse. He needed a strong first quarter and didn’t get it. I don’t think he will quit the race anytime soon, but if he doesn’t reach the $1 million this next quarter, he could be in for a very long, very brutal campaign that may not be good for the Republican Party.

In closing, I want to add that I like Marco Rubio. I personally wish Governor Crist had decided to run for re-election. If Rubio’s fundraising doesn’t improve, I hope he considers switching to run for Attorney General — a race without a strong GOP candidate.

By Dan Sullivan
PoHo contributor

Just when you thought the race to replace outgoing Sen. Mel Martinez couldn’t get any more complicated, a man named Bob Smith threw another wrench into the system last week.

Upon hearing about Smith’s entrance into the race, my immediate reaction was, “Who the heck is this Bob Smith? And what does he think he’s doing poking his nose into one of the most pivotal political battles within the Republican Party for the 2010 election season?”

Of course, Smith isn’t just any candidate. He was a U.S. Senator from 1990-2003, representing the state of New Hampshire. He also ran in the Republican presidential primary in 2000 against the likes of Pat Buchanan and some guy named George W. Bush.

Still, I’d never heard of him.

A few Google searches later, I found I was more familiar with Bob Smith than I realized. Flash back to campaign ‘96. Bob Dole was the man. And Bill Clinton was still brewing a big surprise for the country behind the White House curtains with the help of a young intern.

At that time, I was just a young lad who knew much less about politics and had much less interest in such matters than I do today. I was living in what is affectionately known as the People’s Republic of Massachusetts, which is in close proximity to New Hampshire, where Smith was seeking re-election. Because of said closeness, the local airwaves were saturated with advertisements both attacking and promoting Smith as well as his Democratic challenger for the U.S. Senate – Congressman Dick Swett, a man with one of the most unfortunate names in all of politics. Why he didn’t go by “Richard” is beyond me. I vaguely recall the slogan – which was frequently repeated with much enthusiasm by my schoolmates at the time – “America doesn’t need any more Dick Swett.”

You can say that again.

It still astounds me that a man with a name as memorable as Dick Swett could end up losing an election to a guy with a name as forgettable and anonymous-sounding as Bob Smith. But it did happen, albeit by a slim margin.

I wondered, could something similar happen in Florida? What was Smith doing in Florida in the first place?

In order to get some answers to these and other questions, I decided to give Smith a call at his home in Sarasota.

I started with the obvious: why are you running for U.S. Senate? His wordy answer boiled down to his lengthy prior experience – a qualification that he says puts him above his two main Republican contenders, Gov. Charlie Crist and former State House Speaker Marco Rubio.

“I think without a doubt, I’m the best qualified,” he told me. “The governor has not had that kind of experience. Nor has the former speaker of the House. I think I bring the best qualifications and I have a record on the issues for 18 years. I’m just asking the voters to take a look at that record and see if they would consider me to serve here as well.”

He noted Crist’s shift to the middle as a major source of frustration for him, making comparisons to Arlen Specter’s recent team-change and especially chiding Crist for his support of President Obama’s stimulus plan. He repeated a lot of the same rhetoric that many of my conservative friends have been saying since the ‘08 election – that the party needs to return to its conservative principles.

“There’s nothing wrong with the platform of the party,” he said. “It’s the people that are leading it left, like Charlie Crist and others, that are going to cause the collapse of the party.”

Sounds pretty good to this Republican. My biggest beef with Smith, however, came about as our discussion turned to his personal political history.

When Smith ran for president in 2000, he first entered the Republican primary, before dropping out to run as an independent. However, realizing the difficulty this would pose if he wanted to continue his work with Senate Republicans, he withdrew from the presidential race altogether, announced his return to the Republican Party and endorsed Bush for president.

“I knew I was going to risk my political career, but I (left the party) because I was trying to make the point that you’ve got to listen to conservatives,” he said. “I wanted to try to shake up the party people. Not the party itself. The Republican Party platform is what it is. It’s a set of principles and guidelines, which I strongly support. But leadership, some of those party officials, the party bureaucrat types, as well as some of the elected officials, I felt were walking away from those conservative values. And I knew that if they did and they continued to do it, that eventually they were going to take a drubbing in the polls. And eventually they did, as we saw in 2006 and 2008.”

You can’t say he’s not a man without principles. But still, a red flag went up when I learned that Smith had endorsed John Kerry in 2004. When I asked him about it, he dubbed it a “political mistake” that he made out of anger for Bush’s refusal to support him in his 2002 reelection campaign against former Bush Chief of Staff John Sununu, who later defeated Smith.

Smith’s re-election loss ultimately was what led him to retire to Florida, a place where he had vacationed in the past. Now a seven-year resident of Sarasota, he says he doesn’t want to stand by watching what he says is the country’s slow drift toward socialism. If elected, he says he would be the first Senator, in modern history at least, to have been elected from two different states.

But he’s got a long way to go if he plans to distinguish himself from the young and dynamic Marco Rubio, whose articulation of the same conservative message seems to resonate with more Republicans from a wider array of demographics. Not to mention, he would have to overcome the inexplicable monstrosity that is Charlie Crist’s popularity.

But still, stranger things have happened in politics. Just ask Dick Swett.

By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor and anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio.

For weeks, state and national political reporters have been anticipating that the Charlie Crist/Marco Rubio race for the Republican nomination for Senate in Florida next year will be a barn-burning battle between competing philosophies in the party.

That’s despite a poll released last week that shows the governor with an overwhelming lead in the match-up.

And now Rubio doesn’t necessarily have a hold on all those disaffected Republicans who think the Governor is too moderate for their tastes.

Enter Sarasota resident Bob Smith.

He’s not your average disgruntled conservative but in fact a former two-term U.S. Senator from New Hampshire who also (sort of) ran for President.

Smith declared his candidacy officially last week for the nomination last week. Here’s video of his announcement:

In an interview, the 68-year-old Smith, who moved to Sarasota in 2003 after losing to John Sununu in the New Hampshire GOP Senate primary in 2002, said he’s motivated to run by the liberal leanings of Gov. Crist.

“I think Governor Crist wants to take the party in a different direction than I do,” Smith said. “I’m a Reagan Republican, a conservative on the issues.” He then spouted that he’s tough on immigration, pro-gun, pro-life. He knows that’s not Crist’s style, and that bothers Smith.

“We need conservative leadership that will come forth and say these are the principles of our party, and winning simply with an ‘R’ next to you name is not enough, because the victory is shallow.  What’s a victory if you’re Democrat-lite?”

Conservative principles are what animate Bob Smith. In our 15 minute phone conversation, the word ’principles’ was uttered no less than at least half a dozen times.

His disdain for the moderate politics practice by Charlie Crist is not an uncommon feeling among rank and file Republicans, and thus, we also have Rubio’s candidacy.

Rubio is three decades younger than Smith, smoother, and frankly, more telegenic than the former New Hampshire lawmaker. So, other than ego, why does Smith think he has what it takes over the former House Speaker?

Smith talks about style and experience as differentiating himself from his fellow conservative. Style, Smith explains, in the respect that he says Rubio is better at party politics, having maneuvered his way to leadership in the Florida House.

And experience? Well, yeah, Smith has it in spades over Rubio. Two decades in Washington-type experience, which may not necessarily be what Florida GOP voters are clamoring for in 2010.

Last week, in arguing that perhaps Kendrick Meek or another Democrat would be a better choice for Floridians if they’re main issue was property tax or insurance reform, Palm Beach Post editorial writer Jac Wilder VerSteeg wrote:

Gov. Crist promised to lower property taxes and get property insurance premiums under control. So did former House Speaker Marco Rubio. Neither fulfilled his promise. Now the two are running against each other for the 2010 Republican nomination for U.S. Senate. Takes some nerve.

Can Smith be the Republican Party recipient of voter disgust? Not if the voting populace doesn’t know who he is.

“Money is very important”, he admits. “ I’d by lying if I said it wasn’t. You need to get your message out.”

But Bob Smith can dream.  And he would no doubt love to get back at those Republicans who he says have lost their way.

“I believe if I were to win this election,” Smith said, “we would send a message to the rest of the country, that we can win on conservative values. “

Charlie Crist leads over Marco Rubio 54 percent-23 percent (measuring registered Republicans) for the 2010 Senate seat in Florida according to the latest Quinnipiac University poll. The other 23 percent of voters are undecided or giving other answers.

Rubio has a lot of ground to cover. Only 14 percent of those polled had a favorable opinion of Rubio and 73 percent said they did not know enough about Rubio to have an opinion of him. On the other hand, 60 percent of those polled have a favorable opinion of Crist.

This is not all that surprising as we usually explain who leads a race by name recognition and campaign fundraising, and Crist has plenty of capital in both. Rubio has plenty of experience fundraising also but it may be hard for him to compete with Crist. However, there is an interesting part of this race measured in the Quinnipiac poll that could provide Rubio with a chance to truly challenge Crist.

The poll asked Republicans what’s more important when voting in the primary – the candidates experience or the candidates’ ideas?  Only 36 percent said experience and 56 percent said ideas.  The influence of ideas grew for men where 64 percent of men said that ideas are more important compared to 28 percent of men that said experience was.

This could be read optimistically for Rubio as it challenges the traditional wisdom that name and money win all while asserting the role of ideas in politics.  Rather than out-fundraising Crist and challenging his experience, Rubio might find it more effective to challenge Crist on ideas.

This could potentially be an exciting race if that happens.

2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain, who spurned Charlie Crist in his vice presidential selection process, has endorsed the Florida governor in Crist’s bid for the U.S. Senate in 2010. The Florida Capital Bureau reports:

“I was proud to have had Charlie’s support in my campaign, and I am proud to support him in his campaign,” the senator from Arizona said in a release.

Immediately following Crist’s announcement last week, his campaign rolled out the backing of U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, head of the Republican senatorial campaign committee, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

McCain and Crist are both moderates and the endorsement is not surprising. It does continue to define the primary race between Crist and Marco Rubio, a former House speaker from Miami who is appealing to fiscal and social conservatives in the Republican Party.

File that endorsement in the “Doesn’t-really-help-much” folder.

“Some politicians support trillions in reckless spending…” is one of the attack lines from the Marco Rubio campaign as it launches a full spread of phaser and photon torpedoes (yes, we’re staying with the Star Trek theme until the movie drops below $10m a week at the box office) at Charlie Crist just minutes after the governor declared his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

The ad, predictably, ties Crist at the hip with President Barack Obama.

Watch the full video after the jump.