BONITA SPRINGS, FL — Florida Sen. Rick Scott was riding high on election night after handily winning reelection and the state was called early for Donald Trump. But he cut the Florida-focused part of his victory speech short to talk about his next campaign: the Senate leadership race.
After Tuesday’s sweeping wins for Republicans in Florida, Scott’s pitch to the room was that “Florida is the center of the Republican Party of this country,” and who better to lead the Senate party than a Floridian?
“We have a great Republican Party all across this country, we need a Republican Party in D.C.” he told the crowd.
The screens at his watch party suddenly flickered from “Rick Scott for Senate” to “Rick Scott for Senate Republican Leader” as soon as he finished his speech.
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Florida Democrats had hoped the threat of Scott as Republican leader would bolster support for Democratic candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, but Scott won by more than 10 points.
But unlike his competitors for Senate leader — Sens. John Thune and John Cornyn, who could spend this election season pitching themselves to potential new senators and helping incumbent ones — Scott has had his money and time caught up in his own reelection race.
He floated his Florida campaign $26 million dollars this election cycle. It’s less than half of what he was forced to spend on himself in 2018, but it didn’t give him a lot of wiggle room to make massive campaign donations to his Republican colleagues.
Sen. John Thune gave a $4 million donation to the National Republican Senatorial Committee in September. When NOTUS asked Scott about it at the time, he said, “I’m focused on making sure I win my election, helping my colleagues as I can.”
Scott senior adviser Chris Hartline insisted to NOTUS that this won’t hurt Scott’s leadership race.
“If the race was about who spread more money around or did political favors, it’s not a race we were ever going to win, and it’s not a race we were ever going to run,” Hartline said at the victory-night watch party.
Scott has been positioning himself in the race as the anti-Mitch McConnell, the current Republican leader from Kentucky who will soon step down.
In his final meet and greet before the election Tuesday, Scott slammed McConnell both for not investing in his Senate race and for the way he has run the Senate.
“McConnell has basically been a bully,” Scott said. “The fact that McConnell doesn’t help people like Ted Cruz and me with money that is donated to help Republicans, that’s wrong. It’s not the way this should work.”
Florida Rep. Anna Paulina Luna joined in on the hate at the Scott event in Tampa. “McConnell has actually intentionally not been helping conservative Senate candidates get elected and that has to stop. We don’t want ‘Revenge of the Sith’ here, we want Rick Scott.”
Scott got only 10 votes when he tried to oust McConnell in 2022. Now, he’s got a week to convince significantly more colleagues that the country should look more like the newly ruby-red Florida.
He told the crowd of Florida supporters Tuesday: “Washington can learn a hell of a lot from what we’ve done right here in this great state.”
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Claire Heddles is a NOTUS reporter and an Allbritton Journalism Institute fellow.
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