Rick Scott, multi-millionaire gadfly teabagger executive, has decided that after running HCA so successfully they had to pay the government a fine of $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud, he’d bring his management expertise to government, and has set his sights on the Florida Governor’s mansion.
He’s been running negative ads against his Republican primary opponent, Attorney General Bill McCollum, almost non-stop for months. He has spent $23 million of his own money on his campaign, and his wife has funneled $8 million into a 527 he founded, called "Let’s Get to Work."
Scott, obviously, rejected the state’s campaign spending limits, invoking the so-called millionaire’s provision, and once he exceeded the $24.9 million cap, McCollum thought his campaign would be entitled to a dollar for dollar match by the state to equal Scott’s spending.
Earlier this month, a judge in Tallahassee had rejected Scott’s motion to suspend that part of the state’s campaign finance law on the grounds that it unconstitutionally prevented him from pouring millions more of his own money into the race.
District Judge Hinckel agreed that the law did infringe on Scott’s free speech rights, but upheld the law, saying it served a public interest by reducing the corrupting role of money in elections.
In overturning Hinckel’s ruling, U.S. Circuit Court judge William H. Pryor, stated:
At bottom, the Florida public campaign financing system appears primarily to advantage candidates with little money or who exercise restraint in fundraising.
That is, the system levels the electoral playing field, and that purpose is constitutionally problematic.
Scott already held a substantial lead over McCollum, and looked like a lock to win the Republican nomination before the ruling, but this has serious implications both for the general election race, where Alex Sink will have an uphill battle, but also for the Senatorial campaign, where Democrat-come-lately billionaire Jeff Greene is running against Kendrick Meek in the primary, and barring some freakish turn of events in the next three weeks, is likely to emerge as the Democratic nominee, facing off against Charlie Crist and Marco Rubio.
The worst case scenario is Greene spending his money beating up on Crist, the front-runner in the race, allowing Rubio to sail to victory.
This decision potentially has paved the way for Florida to have far right-wing fringe candidates winning both the Governor’s and Senate races. The Florida Division of Elections is reviewing its options to appeal the ruling, but the clock is ticking, and the Citizens United ruling makes this an uphill battle.