Crist finds an urgency in his final months

In 1994, when a young Charlie Crist was seeking re-election as a state senator from the Tampa Bay area, he ran on the "four E's" — the economy, education, ethics and the environment.

Here we are 16 years later, and Gov. Crist is highlighting the same four points entering Tuesday's opening of the 2010 legislative session.

Is Florida really that static a place? Or is Crist bereft of new ideas?

As he sat down for a pre-session interview Wednesday, Crist held up a sheet of paper with the four E's written in his familiar blue Sharpie pen. It was for the benefit of the portable TV camera we bring to most important interviews.

The session, and his State of the State speech Tuesday evening, may be Crist's last-best hope to send a strong message to Floridians that he is focused on the job.

"I think there's earnestness and a sense of urgency by me and my administration," Crist said. "You want to get things done. I've got 10 months left to do this job as effectively as I possibly can."

In his spacious Capitol office, Crist fielded questions from the Times/Herald Tallahassee bureau for more than 20 minutes, an eternity for a governor well known for his limited attention span and clipped answers.

He wants the Legislature to approve a $100 million increase in higher education spending, $50 million more for Everglades restoration, tax cuts for corporations and back-to-school shoppers and make it a crime to violate the ethics code.

"We really do have, regrettably, a culture of corruption at some levels of public officials — frankly, predominantly, in South Florida," Crist said. "In Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. It's been a nightmare."

Here's Crist on a smattering of other issues:

• Are the "four E's" a snappy-sounding platform aimed at lifting his sagging U.S. Senate hopes? "No. I didn't really think that."

• Did he miss the boat by not calling for an investigation of Ray Sansom a lot sooner? No, he said, that was the Legislature's responsibility, and Sansom's resignation was the right step. "It (the process) has worked. Look where we are," he said.

• Have he and wife Carole begun casually looking at D.C. real estate, in the event he wins the Senate race? Laughing, he replied: "I wouldn't be that gauche. No."

• For at least the 10th time, he said he would not recast himself as an independent Senate candidate but did not explicitly rule it out. "It's not something I'm thinking about," Crist said. "I'm comfortable about the race. I know what the numbers are, but we've got six months to go, and the public really doesn't know the opponent."

Addressing his formidable Senate rival, former House Speaker Marco Rubio, Crist said he looks forward to "educating" voters (likely through a barrage of hard-hitting TV ads) that Rubio is not the fiscal conservative he claims to be, as evidenced by his tossing around six-figure salaries to staffers and spending $400,000 to renovate House offices, including adding a "members only" dining room.

"Are you kidding me?" Crist said. "This is a fiscal conservative? Not by any definition I've ever seen."

Steve Bousquet can be reached at bousquet@sptimes.com or (850) 224-7263.