JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Reporters who didn’t have much first-hand experience with Florida Sen. Rick Scott discounted his second bid for Senate leadership.
They considered his lopsided loss to Mitch McConnell two years ago evidence of Scott’s ceiling and not his floor — a hardy band of 10 willing to resist the Kentucky Republican’s RINO hegemony that allowed President Biden to spend freely in his first two years with senatorial sanction.
McConnell’s last two years have been instantly forgettable, a sepia-tinged Polaroid of stalemate and stale ideas. Republican politics-as-usual. Democrat lite.
Voters proved Tuesday night they want something different. What Reagan in 1976 called “bold, unmistakable colors with no pale pastels.”
Donald Trump won a stunning mandate, sweeping all seven swing states and making gains in liberal bastions, because he set a contrast to the dreary Democratic managerial-class sensibilities the hyperfunded yet hypodynamic Kamala Harris campaign embodied.
A few months of condescension burned a billion dollars, but the light of the money aflame showed the 45th president the way back to Washington.
Trump’s political rise and fall is that not of an establishmentarian but of an outsider.
And the Senate leadership race right now has two insiders — Johns Cornyn and Thune — and one genuine outsider in Rick Scott.
In 2010 when he was elected governor, he was not the establishment choice.
In 2014, the polls said he’d lose re-election.
In 2018, he had to dismantle Sen. Bill Nelson, spending big to win by a little.
And in 2022, even before the McConnell loss, his stewardship of the National Republican Senatorial Committee hit the skids, amid a scad of not-ready-for-prime-time candidates that looked more like a curio cabinet than a starting lineup.
But the whole time he played the long game.
He did so whether as an outsider candidate for governor or as a leader who shepherded conservative outcomes for eight years with one controversial compromise — the post-Parkland legislation that tightened various gun-control requirements. Scott was part of a wave of governors that year who did such, and the clamor for such restrictions in Tallahassee was bipartisan that year.
And he did so in the Senate as well, filing a lot of bills that went nowhere but that established legislative priorities — message legislation at the time but making an indelible impression.
There was no chance Scott was going to back Ron DeSantis for president, and his endorsement of Trump came after it was clear the former president would dominate any competition.
But the two were always in lockstep, including in 2022 when Trump backed (for what it was worth) Scott’s doomed challenge to McConnell.
Scott is loyal and, like Trump, owes a debt to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles. He also understands what is needed in a majority-leader role: a disciplined operation that gets as much across the finish line as possible in a short time.
In Tallahassee, where he had eight years of success as governor, a legislative session is just 60 days long. Scott gets the idea of aggressive action and quick start, which will be needed to handle judicial appointments and recess appointments for Trump’s Cabinet, allowing his team to do meaningful work on Day 1.
The senator is on a political hot streak. After 14 years of close races, Scott won his re-election by double digits against a Democrat polls said was running much closer.
And part of why is he inspires personal loyalty himself. His staff sticks around, and state Republicans in Florida (barring one exception mentioned above) give him respect.
They know he’s disciplined, focused and a good choice to ensure Trump’s agenda is delivered on rather than deferred.
His endorsements are coming through fast and furious now, and Trump supporters should hope that’s a sign of inevitability. The other choices may slow-walk what they voted for, in that quintessentially Washington way.
