FL-Sen: In a damning new exposé, the New York Times reports that Republican Gov. Rick Scott's supposedly "blind trust" for his nine-figure fortune is anything but and is actually designed merely to remove the appearance of conflicts of interest while still letting Scott and his wife, Ann, make investment decisions that intersect with public policies the governor is influencing. As a result, Scott's public actions have presented him with many opportunities for personal enrichment.
A first-time candidate in 2010, Scott was a wealthy businessman who once led a hospital company that was caught orchestrating the largest Medicare fraud in U.S. history and got slammed with a record $1.7 billion in penalties. However, Scott repeatedly pleaded the Fifth Amendment and walked away without any punishment—but with a $10 million severance package and stock options worth up to $300 million.
Scott immediately faced questions about his finances after his election as governor, so he formed what he called a “blind” trust with $74 million in assets in March of 2011. But the Times reports that Scott skirted this setup by transferring millions in assets to his wife and then failed to disclose them, only divulging them when compelled by Senate ethics rules as a federal candidate. Ann Scott reportedly managed investment accounts that may have exceeded the value of the governor's, and their equity portfolios were similar, giving Rick Scott a way to essentially see the impact on his "blind" trust.
And the conflicts of interest are plenty. Shortly after winning the governorship in 2010, Scott mandated drug testing for state workers and urged the legislature to require it for welfare recipients, and he also pushed the state's Medicaid system to pivot toward what's known as “managed care.” All of these moves provided a business opportunity for the chain of 32 clinics the Scotts had a stake in, but as his ownership stake became a growing liability, he soon sold his shares. Scott also held investments in a drug company earning millions from Medicaid, and even a natural gas pipeline whose review he expedited.
Republican lawmakers in the state capital were only too happy to shield Scott from scrutiny. In 2013, they passed a law that “made the mere existence of a blind trust an absolute defense against charges of conflicts of interest”—and the model they followed precisely mirrored Scott’s sham setup. The state’s own ethics code bans officials from owning stakes in companies that Florida regulates or does business with, but after this new law took effect, the state’s ethics commission rubber-stamped Scott’s trust.
And boy has it ever done well. Between Scott’s ascension to the governorship in 2011 and his last available report in 2017, Scott's faux blind trust tripled in value, all the way to $215 million. And that’s not even counting his wife’s assets: Together, the Scotts have net worth between $254 million and $510 million. That enormous wealth has had electoral consequences, too, as Scott spent $83 million of his own fortune on his two razor-thin gubernatorial victories. And this year, he’s pumped a monster $39 million into his Senate race as of the end of September, roughly three times the amount he has raised from donors.
Throughout his entire race against Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, Scott has attempted to portray the incumbent as a career politician who is only in it for himself, even though Nelson’s wealth is orders of magnitude smaller. But as this latest report indicates, it’s a classic act of Rovian projection, since it's actually Scott who’s repeatedly used public office to enrich himself by countless millions.