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Florida’s 44th Governor announced today he wants to be its 46th Governor. Republican turned Democrat Charlie Crist won the job in 12006, left in 2011 and is running again as a Democrat. It didn’t take Republicans long to come out fighting.

As former Republican Charlie Crist was finishing up his morning announcement that he was running against the Governor, “Yea I’m running as a Democrat,” says former Governor, Charlie Crist.

The state GOP was circulating an email with a new web site and TV ad bashing the former GOP Governor. Rick Scott TV Spot says, “Democrat Alex Sink says he failed to lay out a business plan to get Florida out of its worst recession.”

Governor Rick Scott has been laying the ground work for the attack for months, blaming Crist for the economic downturn and taking credit for making the economy better. “We shouldn’t have a downturn, we shouldn’t have lost those 832 thousand jobs before I became governor,” says Governor Rick Scott on June 14, 2013.

GOP consultant Rick Wilson has worked on Crist campaigns before. “Under Charlie Crist we had record foreclosure rates, we had record unemployment rates and Rick Scott has helped clean up the mess that Charlie Crist made,” says Rick Wilson, GOP Consultant.

State Senator John Thrasher replaced Crist’s handpicked GOP chairman after financial irregularities were uncovered.  “Charlie Crist left us, he didn’t handle his problems,” says Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine.

Republicans are putting a half million dollars behind that ad, virtually nothing in a state the size of Florida, the point is to let everyone know they are going to attack.

Democrats say the early attacks may actually help convince a skeptical Democratic base that Crist is now one of them. “Think that’s going to help him in some sense within the Democratic party is that ‘why are the republicans so scared? Why are they attacking so hard,'” says Screven Watson, Democratic Consultant.

Rick Scott has vowed to spend a hundred million dollars to be re-elected.