An outsider from the inside, Rick Scott seeks another six years in the U.S. Senate

By his own admission, Rick Scott isn’t flashy. His allies acknowledge that he is neither a great orator nor the kind of politician who can fill an arena with loyal supporters, á la Donald Trump.

“He likes getting into the minutiae of policy, he likes the details,” said Florida state Rep. Alex Rizo, who campaigned with Scott in Hialeah last weekend. “He thrives on that.”

It’s a reputation that Scott has cultivated carefully and methodically since he captured the Florida governor’s mansion 14 years ago in the midst of the Great Recession. As governor, he became known for his almost-obsessive focus on creating jobs and reining in government spending.

“I learned every line of the budget. All 4,000 lines,” Scott told the Miami Herald in a recent interview. “We had a purpose for every line.”

Now, as he seeks reelection to the U.S. Senate, Scott is betting that his wonkish attention to detail will help net him not only a second term in Washington, but the job of Senate Republican leader — a position that has been held for the better part of two decades by outgoing Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Sitting at a table near the back of the Las Vegas Cuban Cuisine in downtown Doral, Scott proclaimed that “our government is in trouble,” pointing to what he called “a wide-open border,” a “woke military” and the lack of any meaningful plan to balance the federal budget.”

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Every 90 days, he said, he sends out an economic report — usually “about 30 pages” — to his Republican colleagues in the U.S. House and Senate warning of the dire consequences of “out-of-control” government spending.

“I’ve been up there almost six years,” he said. “I can’t tell you a significant issue that’s been resolved, because the leadership doesn’t want to fight over these things, because it’s not important enough to them to have the discussions that bring people along to come to a conclusion. I’m willing to do that.”

Scott has already been rejected from the leadership job once. He challenged McConnell for the role nearly two years ago and was soundly defeated.

And Scott’s reelection to the Senate isn’t a given. Recent public polls show his Democratic opponent in this year’s Senate race — former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell — closing in on him in the final weeks before Election Day, while his approval rating among Floridians remains well under the 50% mark.

He has repeatedly irked his own Republican colleagues in Washington, most notably in 2022, when he released a widely panned “Plan to Rescue America” that initially called for sunsetting all federal legislation after five years. Scott later revised that plan to clarify exemptions for programs like Social Security and Medicare.

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Yet Scott has embraced the role of Republican antagonist in the Senate. In his interview with the Herald, he cast his bid for McConnell’s job as a challenge to what he described as a dysfunctional status quo in the upper chamber.

“If you like the way the Senate operates, I wouldn’t vote for me, because I don’t like the way the Senate operates,” Scott said. “So if the majority likes the way the Senate operates, they’re not going to vote for me. If the majority doesn’t like the way the Senate operates, then I have a shot.”

Scott’s politics

Democrats have also sought to revive a decades-old scandal centering on Scott’s tenure as the CEO of a healthcare company that was slapped with the largest healthcare fraud fine in U.S. history . Scott resigned from the company, Columbia/HCA, amid a federal investigation, but has denied any wrongdoing and suggested that the probe was politically motivated.

Democrats also argue that abortion rights could present a particular challenge for Scott, who has said that, if he were still governor, he would have signed into law a six-week abortion ban that went into effect earlier this year. Scott has since said that he would be more comfortable with a 15-week ban on abortion.

Floridians are set to vote in November on a proposed constitutional amendment that would guarantee abortion access up until fetal viability, or when deemed medically necessary.

Still, Scott, who has never won an election by more than 1 percentage point, has never run a race for public office in such a favorable political environment. Nationally, Democrats are facing a tough fight to maintain their already-narrow Senate majority, and the party has focused most of its resources on winning in battleground states like Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin.

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Florida has also moved increasingly to the right in recent years, as Republicans have amassed a nearly 1 million-voter advantage over Democrats. Scott also stands as the wealthiest member of the U.S. Senate and has already poured more than $13 million into his own reelection campaign.

He has already spent millions of dollars on ads, many of which seek to label Mucarsel-Powell as a “socialist” — a term that carries hefty political baggage in South Florida, where many residents fled after leaving countries with authoritarian, left-wing governments. And he has so far declined to commit to debating his Democratic opponent, telling the Herald simply that “we’ll see” what happens.

Underestimated

Despite Scott’s apparently blasé attitude toward debates, Republicans said that the senator has a deep attentiveness when it comes to politics. His Senate office has won awards for its constituent services — essentially responding to voters’ requests and inquiries — and he has a reputation for giving out his cellphone number to state and local officials, telling them to call him with their concerns.

“The one thing I think people don’t understand is that he’s so accessible,” Rizo said. “He’s probably the highest-level government official that I know personally that is the most accessible. He gives his cellphone number out to mayors, to council people, to state representatives and says ‘please call me.’ ”

During a recent campaign stop at a senior center in Miami Springs, Scott was pulled aside by the center’s manager Tammy Key, who told him that she feared a lack of state funding and a growing number of people at the center meant that they would have to do more with less.

Scott then beckoned over an aide, whom he asked to make a note of Key’s concern so he could look into it.

“That’s an important issue for a lot of people,” Scott told the Herald later. “It’s not just that center.”

Justin Sayfie, a Florida-based Republican lobbyist who worked for former Gov. Jeb Bush, said that, if nothing else, Scott is “focused as a candidate.” In his roughly decade-and-a-half in public office, Sayfie said, Scott has repeatedly managed to home in on voters’ individual concerns.

“He’s been underestimated over and over again politically going all the way back to 2010,” Sayfie said. “But the thing is, his campaigns are always focused. He focused not on the economy and jobs. And at this point, he’s been a public servant for 14 years. He’s got 14 years of a record where he’s defined himself to voters in Florida. They know who he is.”