As primary nears, Stanley Campbell lays out his case for Senate Dem nomination

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Stanley Campbell spoke at the Mt. Zion Primitive Baptist Church in St. Petersburg on Aug. 13, 2024. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)

Tech entrepreneur and former Naval pilot Stanley Campbell campaigned in South St. Petersburg on Tuesday night, telling a group of Baptist ministers that he intends to stun the Florida political world next week and capture the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate.

“I am a real solid candidate. I’m going to win the nomination, and I’m going to beat Rick Scott like he stole something,” Campbell said while speaking at the Mt. Zion Primitive Baptist Church.

The Miami native and Florida A&M graduate is the decided underdog in the Aug. 20 Democratic Party primary to former South Florida U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who has out-fundraised him and received the lion’s share of endorsements in Florida and nationally as the party attempts to take down Scott in November.

“The Democratic Party has picked their choice,” he said, referring to Mucarsel-Powell. “They picked her nine months before I got into the race. They don’t call her a candidate; they call her the nominee. That means they’ve forgotten all the democratic principles that we want to blame other people for ignoring.

“I say democracy is alive, and I’m going to be here to prove it. Democracy will not die on my watch. That’s the Democratic Party’s platform for this year. I told them at the [Democratic] Black Caucus [of Florida] that I agree with that. That democracy in the Democratic Party will not end on my watch.”

Mucarsel-Powell has ignored Campbell during the primary race, putting all her focus on ousting Scott, the Democrats’ bête noire who has tortured them at the ballot box with narrow margins of victories in three different statewide elections over the past 14 years.

Mucarsel-Powell pounced on a USA Today/Suffolk University survey released on Tuesday that showed the GOP lawmaker with only a 35% approval rating. Polls have consistently shown Scott leading Mucarsel-Powell in the race this summer, with a Florida Atlantic University survey released Wednesday showing Scott up by 4 percentage points over Mucarsel-Powell, 47%-43%.

There hasn’t been any significant polling in the Democratic primary race, and Campbell has already gone on the record to express his disappointment with how party leaders have treated his candidacy.

But there’s no question that he’s a substantive candidate. Campbell is CEO of his own global data analytics and health care technology companies, EagleForce Associates and EagleForce Health. His LinkedIn page lists seven patent submissions in the business, intelligence, security, and health care arenas, and he says that overall that he has 14 patents in artificial intelligence.

Platform

He touched on abortion rights, climate change, property insurance, gun safety, and veterans’ care in his 40-minute speech to the Baptist Ministers Conference of St Petersburg and Vicinity on Tuesday night.

A former U.S. Navy pilot, Campbell last month proposed “ the Veterans and Families Bill of Rights ,” which would guarantee a free college education for veterans’ children and expand health care coverage for veterans and their families, including mental health and dental services.

On abortion rights, Campbell said that his wife had an ectopic pregnancy with twins that had ruptured, resulting in her undergoing an abortion. “If that had happened today in the state of Florida, she would have died, and I would not have my youngest son. Because that’s the law,” he said, referring to the recently enacted six-week abortion ban in Florida.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration’s emergency rules outlining medical exceptions to the six-week ban says that doctor can perform abortions after six weeks in the case of an ectopic pregnancy or the woman’s water breaking early. However, doctors don’t always provide services in these conditions for fear of prosecution.

Campbell criticized Scott for his rejecting $2 billion of federal funds in 2011 that would have paid for a high-speed rail network between Tampa and Orlando and his rejection of expanding Medicaid in 2013.

He also criticized Project 2025, the conservative presidential transition plan created by the Heritage Foundation which has become increasingly unpopular with the American public the more they learn about it. “I’ve worked in Washington for the majority of my adult life,” he said. “I’ve worked with the Brookings Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Heritage is just not the same. When you know have conservative ideals and ideologies and you weaponize them? We’ve got a problem.”

Key endorsement

The high-water mark of his campaign was receiving the endorsemen t of the Florida AFL-CIO in June. “His candidate questionnaire, required of all the candidates seeking endorsement, was beyond impressive,” said Rich Templin, director of politics and policy for the labor organization. “And in our interview, he demonstrated an understanding of the issues that we’re facing in Washington, D.C. Just a lot of really in-depth knowledge on what the problems are and some really innovative ideas on how to solve them.”

But Campbell has never leveraged that endorsement into boosting his campaign. He has raised only a little more than $90,000 in contributions, along with the $1 million he has loaned his effort. Mucarsel-Powell, on the other hand, has raised more than $14 million, according to FEC records.

And while his speech was impressive on Tuesday night, there were only about a dozen Baptist ministers in the church to hear his comments (he is expected to appear before a much larger crowd on Saturday night at the Hillsborough County Kennedy-King Gala in Tampa).

Campbell was introduced on Tuesday night by his wife, Cheryl Campbell, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ assistant secretary for administration.

“Florida needs change,” Ms. Campbell said. “And the only person who can go up against a Rick Scott is this man right here,” nodding towards her husband who stood beside her.

Last Friday, Scott simultaneously attacked Campbell while praising him.

“Stanley Campbell is a Kamala Harris liberal, and he and I stand on opposite sides of almost every important issue,” he said in a written statement.

“But Stanley is being underestimated. He is an outsider, with some real business experience, which makes him a threat to Democrats like Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Her campaign is being propped up by Washington insiders and career politicians like Joe Biden. That doesn’t get you far in Florida. You never know what could happen in a Democrat primary, and I look forward to a big win against either in November.”

Former state Rep. Brian Rush and veteran Rod Joseph are the other two Democrats running in next Tuesday’s U.S. Senate primary. Scott is running against Keith Gross and John S. Columbus in the GOP primary.