By MITCH PERRY
Florida U.S. Senator Rick Scott was in Tallahassee on Tuesday, where he complained about the atmosphere in Washington D.C., calling it “completely dysfunctional,” yet also making the case that he can help change the political culture there if he were to be reelected by Florida voters in November.
Florida’s junior U.S. senator was in town in part to receive the endorsement of 80 Senate and House Republicans in his bid for a second six-year term in the Senate. Scott has served in elected office in Florida for more than 13 years now — eight as governor (2010-2018) and the last five serving in the U.S. Senate. In all three elections, his largest margin of victory was just 1.2%.
However, that was in a period when there were a lot more registered Democrats than Republicans in the state, something the 71-year-old noted when speaking at his campaign event, held in the basement of the Florida Retail Federation office next to the state Capitol building with dozens of legislative Republicans crowded near him.
“In 2010, there were 568,000 more registered D’s than R’s and because of what all this group’s done and the policies they passed and things like that I think it’s 630,000 more R’s than D’s,” he said. (The actual breakdown right now is that there are nearly 780,000 more registered Republicans than Democrats in Florida as of Dec. 31, 2023, according to the Florida Division of Elections).
But Scott himself could be more vulnerable in some ways than he was the last time. He ran in 2018 when it took a recount before he was declared the winner over Democrat Bill Nelson.
Stance on abortion rights?
This will be his first election ever running in a presidential election year when turnout is historically higher than in an “off-year” election. And there could be more energy coming from supporters of abortion rights if a proposed constitutional amendment makes the ballot, though that’s far from certain yet.
His likely Democratic opponent this fall, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, has taken him to task for his stance on abortion rights. Scott said last year that he would have signed the six-week abortion ban that may soon become law in Florida, pending a ruling on the current 15-week law that the Florida Supreme Court may rule on any week now.
He has disputed Murcasel-Powell’s contention that he supports a federal abortion ban, though, and again said so on Tuesday.
“I believe it ought to be done at the state level,” he said. But he was less definitive on whether he supports a six-week ban.
“I’ve been clear: I’m pro-baby. I’m pro-life,” he said. “I think that we have to have reasonable limitations like rape, incest and life of the mother.”
He then went on to say that Mucarsel-Powell won’t say “actually where she is” on the issue.
The 12-point plan
Mucarsel-Powell will likely also make an issue of Scott’s controversial 12-point plan that he issued months ahead of the 2022 election that originally called for sunsetting all federal legislation in five years, including Social Security and Medicare. After receiving considerable criticism about that part of the proposal from not only Democrats but also Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Scott amended the proposal to remove Social Security and Medicare in February of 2023.
Scott challenged McConnell as leader of the Senate Republicans shortly after the 2022 election but fell well short in a vote by his GOP Senate colleagues, 37-10.
At Tuesday’s event in Tallahassee, Florida House Speaker Paul Renner praised Scott for his “courage” in challenging McConnell as well as for producing the 12-point plan.
“I loved that plan,” Renner said. “In the campaign model in 2022 it’s ‘well, let’s just run against the Democrats and not stand up for anything.’ Rick Scott put forward an agenda that we stand up for.”
In the past few weeks, Scott has been critical of a bipartisan immigration proposal that only a handful of senators in Washington, D.C. have been working on but hasn’t actually been published yet.
“Why haven’t we seen the bill?” Scott said on Tuesday, expressing frustration with the process. “We’re all U.S. Senators. What we ought to do is be on the Senate floor debating the bill. We haven’t seen the bill.”
However, Scott said that he’s been briefed about what’s in some of the proposals, and said from what he’s heard, it won’t fully secure the border. But he strongly rejected the idea that he and other Republicans who have said the bill is dead on arrival are doing so because they’re taking the marching orders from Donald Trump, who has already come out in opposition to the legislative measure.
“I talk to Trump quite a bit. He hasn’t told me not to support a bill,” Scott said.
Scott was governor in 2018 when the Florida Legislature passed their most comprehensive gun safety bill perhaps ever in the immediate wake of the shooting massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, in Broward County.
On Tuesday afternoon, however, a Florida House committee was scheduled to hear about two bills that would repeal provisions in that law – one that would lower the age to purchase a firearm in Florida from 21 to 18, another that would repeal the three-day waiting period to purchase rifles and other long guns. Scott said Tuesday that the bill he signed was “historic legislation that I’m proud that we passed.”
However, he then went on to say that he has always said that future Legislatures have the power to change state laws. He was then questioned if that he meant supporting the repeal of any parts of the 2018 Parkland bill.
“I support what we passed,” he said succinctly.
Scott is expected to easily win the vote for the Republican nomination for Senate when the primary takes place in August. His best-known GOP opponent is lawyer businessman Keith Gross.
The post In Tallahassee, Rick Scott says ‘D.C.’s pretty messed up’ but says he can fix it if he’s reelected appeared first on Florida Phoenix.
This article originally appeared here and was republished with permission.
