Charlie Crist: GOP 'unfriendly' to Obama because of race

By Catalina Camia / 5-6-2014

Florida gubernatorial hopeful Charlie Crist once explained that he bolted the Republican Party in 2010 because it had become “more strident and more difficult.”

Now, he adds, the GOP’s reactions to President Obama because of his race was a “big reason” for his party switch.

“I couldn’t be consistent with myself and my core beliefs, and stay with a party that was so unfriendly toward the African-American president, I’ll just go there,” Crist, now a Democrat, said in an interview with Fusion TV. “I was a Republican and I saw the activists and what they were doing, it was intolerable to me.”

As an independent, Crist lost the 2010 Senate race to Republican Marco Rubio. His embrace of Obama — literally — at a 2009 event promoting the president’s economic stimulus program helped sink his Senate campaign....

http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2014/05/06/charlie-crist-republicans-obama-race/