Scott fears that his re-election will actually be quite easy.
Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

In 1980, former West Virginia Governor Arch Moore ran a losing campaign against his successor, Jay Rockefeller, whose immense family wealth dashed any real hope of victory. His campaign team used an iconic bumper sticker that read, “Let him spend it all, Arch!”

This could also be the slogan for Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell’s hopeless campaign against the current richest member of the U.S. Senate, Rick Scott of Florida. Florida is a state that has been heavily Republican in recent years, as my colleague Gabriel Debenedetti explained in 2023 after a decidedly disastrous election cycle for the Democrats:

Although Obama won twice, no Democrat has been elected governor of the state since 1994, and in recent years Democrats have struggled to mobilize black Floridians. Perhaps the most notable change is that Democrats are competing for Latino voters in South Florida more than ever.

One victim of this trend was Mucarsel-Powell, who briefly represented a congressional district in Miami-Dade County before suffering defeat in 2020. Now she’s doing a very respectable job in her first statewide race, attacking Scott for MAGA extremism in general and his reactionary views on abortion in particular. Scott has a large war chest, made up of $13 million of his own money (as of late July) and the large donor base he built as former chair of the Republican senators’ fundraising arm. But it’s likely he’ll spend a lot more money before it’s over: In his first Senate race in 2018 and in two previous (successful) gubernatorial races, he spent a total of more than $150 million of his own money on his campaigns. Democrats like to remind their constituents that their senator made his fortune in stocks and severance pay after leaving a burning building belonging to the for-profit hospital chain he founded, Columbia/HCA, which was soon fined more than $1 billion for Medicare fraud (Scott himself was never charged with criminal wrongdoing).

As Scott continues to plunder his children’s inheritance, polls show this race is closer than expected and may even be getting closer. The incumbent is ahead by 4.3 percent in the RealClearPolitics average, but each new poll shows Mucarsel-Powell catching up; most recently, a September Emerson poll showed the race statistically tied, as The Hill reported:

Scott is ahead of Mucarsel-Powell (45 percent) among likely voters in Florida, with 46 percent of the voter support, and is within the poll’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Nine percent of voters said they were undecided.

Among independent voters, 47 percent said they supported Mucarsel-Powell, 34 percent chose Scott, while 19 percent said they were undecided. Among female voters, Mucarsel-Powell is 5 percentage points ahead of Scott, and among male voters, she is 8 percentage points ahead of Scott.

The poll also found that Mucarsel-Powell leads Scott by 6 percentage points among the state’s Hispanic voters, while Scott leads Mucarsel-Powell by 19 percentage points among white voters.

One problem Scott has brought upon himself stems from his recent efforts to become a force in the Senate Republican Conference and a national MAGA star. He feuded with and unsuccessfully challenged Mitch McConnell, and he is running again as Trump’s nominee to succeed McConnell. Perhaps in preparation for these moves, he released a truly wild “11-Point Plan to Save America” ​​in 2022, which is to Florida Democrats what Project 2025 has become to Democrats nationally. It called for the complete shutdown of federal programs every five years (later recalling the state he represents, he exempted Social Security, Medicare, and the U.S. Navy from that death sentence), as well as minimum income taxes for the working poor, whose tax liability would be eliminated through tax credits.

Like other Republicans in Florida, Scott was also influenced by Ron DeSantis’ campaign to ban six-week abortion (which Scott initially supported but then, like Trump, called a little too strict) and the subsequent popular initiative to restore abortion. Roe v. Wades protection of previability abortions in the state constitution. Scott, of course, opposes that amendment, which is likely to win a majority vote in November, surpassing the 60 percent majority needed for passage. Mucarsel-Powell has consistently criticized Scott for being on the wrong side of the issue. In another parallel to the national campaign, the Democrat also attacks Scott for voting against a bipartisan border agreement and for having nothing constructive to contribute on immigration policy (Mucarsel-Powell is herself an immigrant from Ecuador). Scott, of course, calls his opponent a “socialist” who is counting on the noncitizen vote to win. Mucarsel-Powell was smart enough to put herself front and center on one issue, by blisteringly attacking Venezuela’s Maduro regime and its recent efforts to reverse an apparent electoral defeat.

The possibility that Scott could actually lose this race is a godsend for Democrats, not just in Florida but nationwide. They are clinging to control of the Senate with all their might. And with Joe Manchin’s seat already lost and Jon Tester’s in grave jeopardy, a surprise victory over Scott or fellow MAGA member Ted Cruz — who has his own problems with Republican extremism on the abortion issue — could provide the miracle they need (in addition, of course, to a Harris victory in the presidential election, which would make Tim Walz the tie-breaking senator in the Senate). But if nothing else, maybe Mucarsel-Powell can actually get Rick Scott to spend it all.