Liz: Florida can (re)count on me
Woos swing-state Dems with fight to reverse Nelson’s loss
That didn’t take long. Just days after her re-election win in Massachusetts, U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren turned her eyes to the presidential swing state of Florida, making a pitch to raise mon- ey for a Senate recount.
It’s the latest in a series of moves by Warren to inject herself into an important presidential primary state.
Warren sent a fundraising appeal to her supporters, urging them to donate to help Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson’s bid for a recount in his narrow loss on election night to Republican Rick Scott.
“Bill Nelson will need an army of volunteers and lawyers to make sure every vote is counted fairly,” she wrote. “And Bill Nelson’s campaign has already spent every penny it could to get people to the polls on Tuesday. Will you dig deep one more time to support Bill Nelson’s campaign?”
Warren is hoping the answer is yes, but her motives seem less than selfless. She’s eager to help out Nelson and Florida Demo- crats to gain important brownie points in the party for her own expected White House campaign.
Florida is an influential early primary state and has long been a crucial battleground in presidential contests. Warren is hoping her fundraising pitch for Nelson will be remembered by Florida Democrats in 2020.
Warren can afford to help out Nelson. The Massachusetts senator barely touched the $15 million in her own campaign coffers in her successful bid to beat back a challenge from Republican Geoff Diehl. Warren didn’t even make a network TV ad buy in her re-election bid, and still got more than 60 percent of the vote.
Nelson is about 15,000 votes behind Scott, according the latest tally, which would trigger an automatic recount. But it would still be a long shot.
Warren told her supporters “it could make all the difference in the world” if Nelson wins back his Senate seat -even though Democrats would still be in the minority if the Florida Democrat won a recount.
“Don’t forget: One vote in the Senate last year saved health care for tens of millions of Americans. And if we rack up one more win this year, we’ll be that much closer to taking back the Senate in 2020 and beyond,” she wrote in the fundraising email. “Controlling the Senate could come down to one race -- and helping Bill Nelson win this year could clinch it.”
That seems to be a stretch, but when it comes to fundraising, Warren is usually not very subtle. She even raised money for her own campaign off the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation vote -- a move that raised eyebrows and triggered an ethics complaint by a watchdog group.