TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor-turned-Democratic congressman, met with Black leaders in Tallahassee this week to discuss an issue central to his 2022 campaign for the Governor's Mansion: voting rights.

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Crist used the opportunity to rail against Gov. Ron DeSantis, who last month signed a Republican-crafted law that restricts access to mail-in voting. The law is facing multiple legal challenges, with critics calling it voter suppression targeted at poor and minority voters.

"He's signing bills that appeal to the Republican right nationally, not to our fellow Floridians today," Crist told a roundtable at the headquarters of the Tallahassee NAACP. "And you know why? He's running for president." 

Since Jan. 1, DeSantis has raised $30 million for his re-election effort. Buoyed by a rising national profile owing largely to his pandemic leadership, he's traveling frequently to out-of-state Republican gatherings and addressing constituencies that could prove helpful if he were to launch a 2024 presidential bid.

Crist, however, is seeking to short-circuit the governor's presidential ambitions by denying him a second term in Tallahassee. His campaign is calculating that seizing on Democrats' fury over the election law, and a new set of laws aimed at suppressing violent protests, will turn out key voting blocs — including Black voters.

In 2014, Crist narrowly lost his bid to unseat then-Republican Gov. Rick Scott in large part because of lower-than-expected turnout among Black voters in South Florida and the I-10 corridor. He also suffered from his party-switching past, which DeSantis has already seized on.

"Which party is he going to run under? Do we know for sure?" DeSantis asked on May 4, the day Crist announced his 2022 candidacy.

But despite his clear challenges, Crist told reporters Wednesday he's confident an aggressive 17-month ground game can trump DeSantis' power of incumbency.

"You go to the people, you travel the state, you look them in the eye, you tell them what you want to do and you listen to what they want and what they need, and then you deliver on it when you have the honor of getting there," he said.