Gov. Charlie Crist started 2010 as a Republican, and the favorite to be the party’s nominee for U.S. Senate.

He ended 2010 as an independent, and about to join the 12 percent of Floridians who are unemployed as his four-year term as governor ends.

That was not the only thing that drastically changed in 2010 in Florida state government. With Crist ensured to be leaving office when the year came to a close and the entire Cabinet set to turn over too, change was the overriding theme of 2010.

Not many people outside of the health care sector knew who Rick Scott was when the clock struck midnight last New Year’s Eve. Next week, Scott will become the 45th governor of Florida. Similarly, Attorney General Bill McCollum was sure to be the Republican to take on Democrat Alex Sink. Except, he wasn’t.

Sink was supposed to be the national Democrats’ one bright spot on what everyone saw shaping up to be a GOP tsunami this election cycle. But those 67,000 votes the Sink camp was looking for desperately on Election Night never came in from Palm Beach County, which was again at the center of a razor-thin contest in Florida.

Elsewhere, Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Kendrick Meek was not supposed to be able to beat Jeff Greene in his party’s primary – he did – and he was not supposed to be able to overcome Crist siphoning Democratic votes in their fractious three-way race with Marco Rubio – he didn’t.

When Election Night 2010 was all said and done, Florida had an all-new – and an all-Republican – Cabinet. Former Senate President Jeff Atwater defeated former state Rep. Lorrane Ausley to replace Sink as CFO, leaving Democrats on the outside looking in. Ausley humorously biked to Atwater’s house to accuse him of ducking debates, but the charge – like her campaign – never really got rolling.

She also famously featured a spray-painted Old Capitol in her lone campaign commercial, but with Atwater being joined next year by Republicans Pam Bondi and Adam Putnam on the Cabinet, Democrats might consider tagging the place for real in 2011.

Speaking of unexpected political occurrences, Jim Greer was out as Republican Party of Florida chairman before baby new year 2010 was a week old. He was replaced by a legislative veteran in Sen. John Thrasher, who was brought in to calm things down as Greer was arrested and charged with steering party money to a company he set up with former RPOF Executive Director Delmar Johnson.

There was also probably a big change in Greer’s personal relationship with Johnson when he learned that his partner-in-alleged-crime had been working with investigators to catch him.

"Kiss my godson for me," Johnson said as a farewell to Greer on a call released in May as he cooperated with an investigation targeting his boss and godson's father.

If he’d only known the call was being recorded and Johnson had turned on him, Greer might have been the one telling Johnson to kiss something.

Last year’s scandal-plagued Republican, former House Speaker Ray Sansom, punctuated his fall from power this year by retiring from the Florida House altogether just days before the beginning of the 2010 legislative session. He may be still muttering about the St. Petersburg Times, which drove the story that brought about his demise.

There was change on the state’s utility regulation panel as well. Five Public Service commissioners voted against rate increases for the state’s largest power company -- and now, four of them are no longer on the PSC. Commissioners David Klement and Benjamin Stevens were voted off the panel just months after joining – Stevens started out in the beginning of 2010. Later in the year, former PSC Chairwoman Nancy Argenziano and Commissioner Nathan Skop were denied second terms – in fact, they didn’t even get interviews.

And at least one high-profile state agency head, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Mike Sole, saw the changes coming at the end of the year and made plans early for 2011. For Sole, that meant taking a much-better-paying job with Florida Power & Light.

A SLICK SUMMER

Sole may have been ready for a change of pace in part because the situation in the Florida Gulf Coast was hard to get a handle on in the wake of a massive BP oil spill.