By John Fund | NATIONAL
REVIEW
Florida governor Rick Scott in
February 2018 (Reuters/Colin Hackley)
Rick Scott, Florida’s popular
governor, has a good chance of ousting a Democratic senator this fall.
Naples, Fla. — Noted political handicapper Charlie Cook sees
nothing but bad news for Republicans in the midterm elections. “If I were
Republican, I’d be nauseous right now with what’s coming up,” he said on
Sunday’s Meet the Press on NBC.
But that’s not quite true. Cook’s
own analysis of House races shows Democrats leading in 27 out of 55 competitive
races, and only a slight favorite to win control of the chamber.
And in the
Senate, Republicans will get a big boost Monday when Florida governor Rick
Scott announces that he will challenge 75-year-old Democratic senator Bill
Nelson this year.
Scott has won two highly competitive runs for governor, and
his wealth means that he can partially finance an ad campaign in the
ultra-expensive media markets of the state.
Scott is the GOP’s best chance
to win a seat that could decide whether the party keeps control of the Senate.
The most recent polls show Nelson with less than a four-point edge.
But Scott has overcome much bigger
deficits in the past. In 2010, he beat Alex Sink, a former banker, and in 2014
he beat party-switching former governor Charlie Crist. He won both races by a
single percentage point. Both races featured charges that Scott was a heartless
former hospital executive who relentlessly focused on job creation and economic
improvement, at the expense of other pressing issues.
Seven years after his first
election, Scott feels vindicated for his laser-like focus.
During his
tenure, Florida has cut taxes year after year, seen the highest
public-high-school graduation rates in 13 years, created 1.26 million
private-sector jobs since 2011, and had the lowest crime rate in 45 years.
Unemployment
is a third what it was when he took office in the aftermath of the 2008
financial meltdown. Housing prices went up 15 percent in Florida last year,
continuing the state’s recovery from a housing bust.
Scott also touts his deregulation
record. “Burdensome regulations are the No. 1 reason our economy doesn’t
provide enough jobs for everyone,” he told me at a New York lunch last year.
“In Florida we have cut taxes, but ending 3,000 regulations is what’s made our
economy take off. If I decide to go to Washington, I want to help President
Trump continue to take the leg irons off of this economy and reinvent
government.”
Scott says his persistent efforts to
make Florida a business-friendly mecca have paid off politically. In 2014, he
won 38 percent of voters under the age of 25 and the same percentage among
Hispanic voters — two groups Republicans have struggled with.
All this doesn’t mean that Governor
Scott hasn’t fallen off the conservative wagon at times when political
pressures have built up.
There’s no doubt that Scott’s
policies have left the state far better off than high-tax liberal bastions.
In 2012, he reversed course and
proposed expanding the state’s Medicaid program to comply with Obamacare. He
was rescued from that folly only by his Republican legislature, which knew that
Washington couldn’t be trusted with its end of the bargain.
In 2015, he failed
to appeal a court decision that made it easier for noncitizens to vote with
impunity. This spring, he responded with alacrity to the Parkland, Fla., school
shootings, supporting some of the changes advocated by gun-control activists.
He embraced a bill banning firearms sales to almost everyone under age 21, and
he opposed President Trump’s idea of arming school teachers.
Then there is the state budget.
Scott was a fan of budget vetoes in his first years as governor, but last month
he signed a budget that included $4 billion in new spending.
University of
Central Florida professor Aubrey Jewett says the spending plan looks like a
political document. “It is not consistent with what he had done,” Jewett told USA
Today. “It looks like it is designed to help him run for the U.S. Senate.”
Scott is unfazed by such criticism.
The economic growth his policies have
aided means that the state is strong enough to make “investments” in key
spending areas, he says.
There’s no doubt that Scott’s
policies have left the state far better off than high-tax liberal bastions.
Florida gained 350,000 new residents, many of them economic escapees from
high-tax California, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
Scott says the liberal
governors of those states are the best advertisements for their citizens
picking up stakes and moving to Florida.
Conservatives feel good about Scott
taking his record to the voters this November.
Ron DeSantis, a Republican
congressman who is running to succeed Scott as governor, told me this weekend
that Scott will also be able to pummel Nelson, the Democratic incumbent
senator, for his votes against Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch and against
the Trump tax cut.
Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform,
says Scott can use the state’s prosperity to appeal to many voters who wouldn’t
normally be reachable.
A recent Mason Dixon poll, for example, found that
even 59 percent of Democrats think that the state’s economy is on the right
track.
Rick Scott signed and kept the pledge against raising taxes for eight
years.
Even better, “he cut taxes each and
every year of his governorship,” Norquist told me. “He always put taxpayers
ahead of the special interests, and that’s a winning political formula.”
