The BP disaster will plague the Gulf for years. But there’s a silver lining, if you’re a newly minted independent looking to remind Florida voters that you’re the man in charge. PLUS, 6 ways you can help the Gulf.

As millions of gallons of oil continue to drift in the Gulf Coast, Florida Governor Charlie Crist—the newly minted independent running for Senate—is gauging its potential impact on Florida. In both literal and figurative terms, Charlie Crist is watching which way the wind blows.

If the winds begin to push the oil slick to the east, Florida's Panhandle could be devastated. The governor has already declared a state of emergency in 19 Florida counties and was expected to extend that warning all the way down to the southern tip of the state as scientists fear the looping currents of the Gulf of Mexico could easily funnel the oil down into the marine sanctuaries of the Florida Keys.

Politicians always look better when they appear to be doing something. And for Crist, being able to change the conversation from his inability to win the Republican primary, to his efforts to protect the state from future catastrophes like this one, is a godsend.

But in every crisis there is political opportunity, and Crist, who has gambled his political life by abandoning the Republican Party and running in November as an independent, cannot afford to let any opportunity pass him by. As the governor of one of the states threatened, Crist has been front and center throughout this crisis. Seventy-two hours after announcing his independent run, Crist was on Meet the Press—not in the studio looking like every other suit-and-tie wearing Sunday morning talk-show guest—but live via satellite from the Gulf Coast, clad in the ubiquitous garb of a leader in charge, the state-issued polo shirt with emergency management logo over his heart.

Politicians always look better when they appear to be doing something. And for Crist, being able to change the conversation from his inability to win the Republican primary, to his efforts to protect the state from future catastrophes like this one, is a godsend.

Of course it does mean the governor is having to backtrack on yet another pledge he made. In 2008 when he was campaigning with John McCain, Crist had been okay with expanding off shore oil drilling—because at the time he was sensing the public mood was demanding it to counter the rise on gasoline prices. So for Crist, first there was drill, baby, drill. Then there was spill, baby, spill. Now there is flip, baby, flip.

"I've always said as long as it was far enough, clean enough and safe enough that it would be something that I'd be willing to look at," Crist told reporters on Monday. "This is not far enough, this is not safe enough, and it sure as heck is not clean enough. I mean it's not good enough—period. So given that, I think all bets are off."

Susan MacManus, a political scientist at the University of South Florida, said Crist's new aversion to off shore oil drilling may be politically expedient but comes with some risk. "That oil spill scares a lot of Floridians," she said, "but everything can change very quickly if gas prices go up to $5 a gallon this summer."

Crist's two likely opponents in November have not been nearly as omnipresent on the issue as the governor. Democratic Rep. Kendrick Meek has long opposed offshore drilling and continued to object to it even when President Obama announced in late March that he would expand drilling off Florida's coast. He recently launched an online petition calling for a moratorium on any expansion of offshore drilling.

The spill, however, is a far slicker problem for conservative Marco Rubio. The folks who are most likely to be in favor of continued oil drilling in the Gulf are the clique within the Republican Party that supports Rubio. Yet at the same time, Floridians do not like overt threats to their environment.

That tension was obvious when Rubio, appearing on Fox News Sunday, sidestepped the drilling question and focused instead on cleanup.

“Order No. 1 is to get this under control," Rubio said. "And step No. 2 is to figure out why this happened so that it will never, ever happen again.”

For Crist, this oil spill could give him the traction he needs to regain momentum in his race against Rubio. That is, until the wind blows in a new direction.

Jim DeFede, a longtime South Florida investigative reporter, works for CBS4 News in Miami.