Come April 9th, we’ll finally have an answer:
Florida Gov. Rick Scott is teasing a "big announcement" on April 9, fueling long-running speculation that he will launch a Senate bid to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in November.
Scott has long been courted by national Republicans to run against Nelson and President Donald Trump himself said last year he hopes Scott runs for the Senate.
In the face of the Senate speculation, Scott has said he's focused on his "existing job." But with Florida's legislative session ending earlier this month and a May filing deadline approaching, Scott appears poised to announce his intentions.
Florida Republicans have been anticipating that Scott would run for the Senate but that doesn’t mean all of them are ready to line up behind Scott:
As Florida’s Republican establishment prepares to rally around Gov. Rick Scott in his forthcoming bid to knock of Democratic incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, one of the state’s most well-known Republicans does not seem poised to help lead the charge: Sen. Marco Rubio.
“I don’t campaign against Bill Nelson,” Rubio said Tuesday during a sit-down with reporters in his Tallahassee office. “Bill Nelson and I have a very good working relationship.”
Rubio’s tone is not the type that would normally be expected as the political camps on both sides of the aisle start to ramp up in advance of the likely midterm elections clash between Scott and Nelson. There are few Republicans around the state who, when asked, would not tick off the talking points that have defined Scott’s eight years in office.
Rubio did say, “I’ll support the Republican nominee,” the sort of answer that almost nearly mirrors his tepid public support in 2016 of then-GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump.
He called his relationship with Scott “positive,” and said that he thought he would have a good relationship with Scott if the two were in Washington together in the Senate. But he noted that with Nelson he could not "have a better partner."
“I don’t work as close with him [Scott] because he’s a state official, and I’m a federal official,” Rubio said.
He pointed to health care reform as an issue where the two have worked well together.
Rubio and Scott have a thorny political history.
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary campaign, while stopping short of an endorsement, Scott praised Trump for speaking his mind and tapping into Americans' frustration with the state of government and their country in a USA Today op-ed published two months before the Florida presidential primary.
When Rubio dropped out to run for reelection to the Senate, Scott was one of the last Republicans to endorse him. And Scott continued to praise his longtime ally Carlos Beruff, who was in the race before Rubio decided to abandon his presidential bid.
That’s not the best press to get before making your announcement for the U.S. Senate. Then again, neither is this:
When Gov. Rick Scott and U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced on Jan. 9 that Florida was “off the table” for offshore oil drilling, the governor cast the hastily arranged news conference at the Tallahassee airport as unplanned and the Trump administration’s decision as something Scott had influenced at the eleventh hour.
In fact, Zinke’s top advance staffer, whose job it is to plan ahead for such events, was in Tallahassee the previous day. And top officials from the offices of both Scott and the secretary were in regular contact for several days leading up to the announcement, according to more than 1,200 documents reviewed by POLITICO Florida as part of a public records request.
The documents, which include phone records, text messages, and emails, contradict the supposed spontaneous event that portrayed Scott as single-handedly securing a politically popular win for Florida’s environmental future only days after the administration had spelled out a controversial new national five-year plan to boost offshore oil drilling. The event left Scott, at least for the moment, with a big victory to hold over Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), whom the term-limited Scott is almost assuredly challenging in 2018.
The records reaffirm the perception at the time that the Trump administration’s decision to reverse course and remove Florida from the list was carefully choreographed to give Scott a political win in his widely expected challenge this year to unseat Nelson.
“Whatever Rick needs, they [Trump administration] will do. There will be net more offshore drilling, but the governor will get what he needs,” one Republican who spoke directly with Zinke told POLITICO at the time, a prediction that came true.
It will “be a big win, and it won’t be Bill Nelson bringing it home,” the Republican added.
Turns out all the optics were orchestrated long before that January day.
Zinke press secretary Heather Swift told POLITICO Florida Monday that “the governor’s staff was certainly aware that the secretary was traveling to Florida at the governor’s request,” but Scott’s office — at the time — gave no indication the meeting and oil drilling deal had been hashed out prior to the Jan. 9 airport meeting.
Scott’s office did not include the meeting on his original public schedule, which is released each morning. The event was sent out as part of an amended calendar around 4:50 p.m. on January 9, about an hour before the event. Around the same time, Scott’s office began telling reporters to get to the airport, but there was no notice prior to the amended statement and calls from staff. There was an absolute feeling in Florida political circles at the time that the announcement came out of nowhere.
Or this:
The Scott administration quickly worked to distance itself from the collapse of a Florida International University pedestrian bridge that left six dead, but documents from the state’s transportation department and the university paint a different picture.
From the selection of the politically powerful firm that led the project to the days leading up to the collapse, the Florida Department of Transportation, overseen by Gov. Rick Scott, had direct involvement in a project whose collapse has rocked South Florida and sparked a federal investigation.
“It’s not an FDOT project,” Scott said during a press conference the night the bridge fell. “It’s an FIU project.”
As recently as September 2016, though, more than 10 months after the selection of the firms to design and build the project, his transportation agency was reviewing all construction-related material.
“The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is currently reviewing 100% of CD [construction documents] for the bridge foundation, roadway and superstructure,” read a Sept. 1, 2016 agenda for the FIU Board of Trustees Finance and Audit Committee.
During that meeting, the committee received an update on the “University City Prosperity Project.” The idea behind the project was to build a pedestrian bridge over SW 8th Street connecting the university and the city of Sweetwater.
The department quickly sought to distance itself from the March 15 collapse, sending out a “preliminary fact sheet” hours after the disaster saying it was a "local agency project, not a Florida Department of Transportation project."
Even under the department’s own guidelines, though — under the so-called local agency projects they administer — FDOT has oversight responsibility.
And this doesn’t help:
A judge on Tuesday ordered Gov. Rick Scott and the Cabinet to dismantle Florida’s “fatally flawed” system of arbitrarily restoring voting rights to felons and to replace it by April 26.
U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in Tallahassee issued a permanent injunction in support of the Fair Elections Legal Network, which sued the state a year ago. The group successfully challenged the constitutionality of the state’s 150-year-old voting rights restoration process for felons in the nation’s third-largest state.
“This is a victory for the principle that the right to vote cannot be subjected to officials’ gut instincts and whims,” said Jon Sherman, senior counsel for the nonprofit voting rights group. “We are also heartened that the court prevented Florida from following through on its threat to be the only state in the nation with an irrevocable lifetime ban on voting for all former felons — what the court called ‘the ultimate arbitrary act.’ ”
Here’s a little more info about that:
Walker did not specify what rules the state should put in place but instead gave Scott and state officials — who act as the state's clemency board — until April 26 to come up with a new process. Florida was sued on behalf of ex-felons whose requests for voting rights were turned down.
"This court is not the vote restoration czar," wrote Walker, who was appointed by President Barack Obama. "It does not pick and choose who may receive the right to vote and who may not. Nor does it write the rules and regulations for the executive clemency board." But he said the court possesses the established duty to "say what the law is."
John Tupps, a spokesman for Scott, did not say if the Governor's Office would appeal Walker's decision. But Tupps defended the process now in place.
"The governor continues to stand with victims of crime," Tupps said. "He believes that people who have been convicted of felony offenses — including crimes like murder, violence against children and domestic violence — should demonstrate that they can live a life free of crime while being accountable to our communities."
Florida's Constitution automatically bars felons from being able to vote after leaving prison, and Walker's ruling leaves the ban intact.
The state's clemency process allows the governor and three elected Cabinet members to restore voting rights, although the governor can unilaterally veto any request. The process has changed over the years.
Shortly after taking office in 2007, then-Republican Gov. Charlie Crist persuaded two of the state's three Cabinet members to approve rules that would allow the parole commission to restore voting rights for non-violent felons without hearings, and within a year, more than 100,000 felons were granted voting rights. Since Scott and state officials changed it in 2011, fewer than 3,000 of them have had their rights restored.
Walker first ruled back in February that the state's system of restoring voting rights to ex-felons is arbitrary and unconstitutional. He then asked for both sides to offer up remedies.
Lawyers who represented those suing Florida wanted the judge to order the restoration to anyone who had been out of prison at least five years. But Walker in his ruling said he lacked the authority to issue such a specific remedy. He chided the Scott administration and Bondi's office, which suggested that state officials could do whatever they want, including refusing to restore voting rights to everyone.
"This court concluded that Florida's arbitrary slow drip of vote restorations violates the U.S. Constitution — but that does not mean defendants can shut off the spigot of voting rights with a wrench, yank it from the plumbing and throw the whole apparatus into the Gulf of Mexico," wrote Walker.
If I were Scott, I would be having second thoughts about this race. Whatever decision Scott makes, U.S. Senator Bill Nelson (D. FL) is ready to take him on:
Bill Nelson says he knows what’s coming his way and he’s ready for what could be the toughest re-election challenge of his Senate career.
“I’m ready,” he said Tuesday in West Palm Beach, a day after Gov. Rick Scott told people that April 9 will be the day for his big political announcement.
Scott, the Republican governor who can’t seek re-election because of term limits, is widely expected to challenge the Democratic senator, in what would be an extravaganza of political money, advertising and negative attacks.
“It’s going to be clearly a set of contrasts on so many issues, from the environment to sea level rise to oil drilling off the coast, to the expansion of Medicaid in Florida. I mean the list just goes on and on and on,” Nelson said in a brief interview.
The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre illustrates the acrimony between Scott and Nelson.
At a Feb. 21 CNN town hall about the shooting that killed 17 and wounded 17 others, Nelson jabbed at Scott for skipping the event. “There is no representative from the state of Florida. Our governor did not come here, Governor Scott,” Nelson said.
And Nelson is readying a new base of support for November:
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson and Tampa Congresswoman Kathy Castor spoke at a forum of high school students and school board members in Tampa Monday. He told the students to keep on demonstrating for gun control -- but be prepared if little happens.
Sen. Nelson called the meeting at the Hillsborough School Board offices to hear from students who attended Saturday's marches on gun violence and school safety.
Nelson ticked off the list of shootings: Sandy Hook Elementary School, the Las Vegas shootings; the Pulse Night Club in Orlando, and told the students nothing happened on gun control - until now.
"I think it is a part of this continuum of us seeing people rise up to take leadership - as you have, in the body politic," he said. "I think it's going to have a reaction in the November elections."
The answer, he said, is for students to become politically active, go to the polls and vote for change.
Let’s help Nelson get ready to take on and defeat Scott. Click here to donate and get involved with Nelson’s re-election campaign.