Florida has gone ten years without being impacted by an Atlantic Hurricane. Joaquin which sat not far off the Florida coast and battered the Bahamas as a Category 4 was the 64th straight storm that eluded the Sunshine States. Since recording of tropical weather in the Atlantic basin began the previous record was just 33 hurricanes between 1979’s Hurricane David (which contrary to popular belief technically did come ashore in Florida even though the majority of bad weather stayed off the coast as the killer storm strangely made a northern turn just as it was making landfall on the Treasure Coast) and Hurricane Elena in 1985 which threatened the  Panhandle and the Big Bend on an erratic path before coming ashore in Mississippi. But Elena sat off the Gulf Coast of Florida long enough to be categorized as impacting the state.

When Governor Crist and the legislature reformed the insurance industry in 2007 after the catastrophic storms of 2004 and 2005, conservatives claimed the state was “gambling” and mortgaging its future. The previous Governor Jeb Bush didn’t do what needed to be done to address the crisis of insurance companies leaving the state, Bush always wanting to take a straight “free market” approach to matters allowed hundreds of thousands of Floridians to be dumped by their insurance companies during the last two years of his time as Governor.

Crist’s aggressive and progressive actions saved the state from an insurance crisis and with no storm having hit the state in ten years, his gamble paid off for Floridians.