Former Governor Charlie Crist is switching parties...again. The once Republican Governor in 2006, turned Independent to run for Senate in 2010 against Marco Rubio.

Friday night, Crist announced he's a Democrat.

Crist sent out a tweet that said, "Proud and honored to join the Democratic Party in the home of President @Barack Obama!"

Crist tweeted out a photo of him smiling with his wife as he held up a Florida voter registration application. Crist signed the papers changing his affiliation to Democrat at a Christmas reception at the White House.

Florida Decides Democratic analyst Ana Cruz said the announcement was expected for quite some time.

"Charlie really has been judicious in taking his time in switching parties," Cruz said. "However, this has been a long time coming for him."

Cruz said Crist more than likely made the switch so he could challenge current Republican Governor Rick Scott in 2014.

"I think we've seen over the course of the last year and half his intention to switch parties to become a Democrat from an Independent," Cruz said. "And he'll tell you often the Republican Party left him. That he didn't really leave the Republican Party. And Democrats are going to open their arms to him."

But Florida Decides Republican analyst Chris Ingram isn't so sure the Democrats will roll out the welcome mat.

"He's going to run as a Democrat. So I guess the chameleon party didn't want him. So the Democrats will," Ingram said. "It just remains to be seen if the Democrats will actually embrace him."

Ingram also doesn't buy the reason behind the move.

"Charlie left the Republican Party because it was politically in his mind more expedient to do so," Ingram added.

And Ingram said if Crist decides to run for Governor, he'll have a mountain to climb in Tallahassee.

"He would get nothing done because the Republicans who control both houses of the legislature loathe Charlie Crist," Ingram said.

"In order for us to make any parity or any gains in the House and the Senate, we have to pay especially attention to making our party whole again," Cruz said. "And we really can't raise the money that we need to raise to organize unless you occupy the Governor's mansion."

What will happen next with Charlie Crist? That's still up in the air. But for now, he's embracing a party that he said he's "proud and honored to be apart of".

"I've had friends for years tell me, `You know Charlie, you're a Democrat and you don't know it,'" Crist told the newspaper Friday night.

He cited the Republican Party's shift to the right on a range of issues, including immigration, education and the environment.

Crist, 56, spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., that nominated Obama for a second term and campaigned for his re-election.

But it is unlikely that Crist would get a clear path to the Democratic nomination. Former State Sen. Nan Rich, D-Weston, has already jumped into the race and former Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink could run. Sink barely lost the 2010 governor's race to Scott. Some Democrats remain wary of Crist and even outgoing Florida Democratic Party Chairman Rod Smith has joked that just because someone joins the congregation, "you don't make them the preacher."

Steve Schale, a Democratic political consultant who worked on Obama's Florida campaign, called Crist a "viable Democrat."

"He earned his stripes when he supported the president," Schale said.

But Schale predicted that if Crist runs for governor, he would likely get a challenge from Sink and other Democrats and would have to endure a hard-fought primary.

Republicans in recent weeks have already ramped up their criticism of Crist and have pointed out that in the past he was critical of Obama and once described himself as a Republican in the mold of President Ronald Reagan and Crist's predecessor as governor, Jeb Bush.

"Charlie Crist's first official act as a Democrat was to tell a lie about why he is now pretending to be one," the Florida GOP said in a statement early Saturday. "The truth is that this self-professed, Ronald Reagan Republican only abandoned his pro-life, pro-gun, conservative principles in 2010 after he realized that Republicans didn't want to send him to Washington D.C. as a senator, especially after he proved he couldn't do the job as governor."

Rick Wilson, a Florida-based Republican consultant, predicted that Crist would have to spend the next 14 months explaining how his switch to Democrat was something beyond just his own political ambitions.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.