Trump rewriting the script in Florida governor race
Adam Putnam is about to become the Bill McCollum of 2018.
Florida’s agriculture commissioner faced the existential challenge of his political life during last week’s gubernatorial debate with U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis. In just a few months, Putnam had gone from front-runner to fading star, the latest candidate to check every traditional box yet find himself unpopular in today’s Republican Party.
Needing a strong showing, Putnam came off shrill and desperate. Though he has campaigned mostly on Fox News and sounded national GOP themes, DeSantis sounded more credible on Florida issues. DeSantis tagged Putnam on the algae crisis, noting all the money U.S. Sugar has donated to his campaign, and Putnam had no response.
Almost certainly, Putnam will lose to DeSantis in the Aug. 28 primary and fail to win the governorship he has coveted for nearly a decade. It’s all very familiar. Perhaps Putnam and McCollum can commiserate.
Eight years ago, McCollum was finishing his second term as attorney general. The office became his political lifeboat after losing to Bill Nelson in the 2000 Senate race.
The Republican establishment backed McCollum for governor. He had performed the required tasks. When the party faced a credit card scandal, McCollum didn’t investigate. Speaking to reporters that March, McCollum focused on the Democrats’ likely nominee — then-Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink.
A month later, Rick Scott entered the race. He spent $1.5 million on TV ads, a tiny appetizer for the $70 million of his own money Scott would spend.
Despite that early surge, party leaders dismissed Scott. Jeb Bush said he didn’t know him. Scott never had run for office. In 2009, he had financed a group that campaigned against the Obama administration’s health reform plan.
Then there was the source of that wealth. Scott had co-founded a hospital chain that paid a $1.7 billion fine — the largest at the time — for defrauding the government on Medicare and Medicaid payments. Scott lost his job, but he left with $300 million in stock.
A health care consultant who had criticized Scott’s management doubted that Scott could win. Peter Young told the Naples Daily News, “I don't see him having any viable traction.”
As Donald Trump has shown, however, some voters can forgive almost any sin if they hear the right words. Scott attacked McCollum for opposing a Florida version of Arizona’s restrictive immigration legislation. Scott said of McCollum, who then had 30 years in public office, “People are excited to elect someone who is more concerned about Floridians' next job than they are their next political office.”
McCollum nearly hung on, but Scott beat him by three percentage points. After the primary, the establishment that rejected Scott embraced him and hasn’t let go.
DeSantis doesn’t have Scott’s money or Putnam’s money. Putnam has $9 million in direct money — twice that of DeSantis — and his Florida Grown political action committee has raised $30 million.
But DeSantis has President Trump, who endorsed him just before Christmas, reportedly after watching a DeSantis segment on Fox. Trump repeated the endorsement — which brought mega money from out of state — in June. Putnam’s poll numbers dropped. So did contributions to Florida Grown. According to one pollster, Republicans who knew about the Trump endorsement favored DeSantis by 31 points. Those who didn’t know about it favored Putnam by 23 points.
DeSantis chummed GOP primary voters during the debate by noting that Putnam had called Trump “dishonorable, vile and obscene.” DeSantis, a Navy veteran, didn’t mention that Putnam made those comments after Trump insulted Gold Star parents and was heard on tape proclaiming that he could grab women “by the p---y.”
Though Putnam ran the usual commercials attacking “liberal elites” and deporting “criminal illegal aliens,” he’s far less ideological one-on-one. I’ve heard him explain how, in Congress, he had to vote for the unpopular financial bailout to avert a depression. I’ve heard him give a reasoned breakdown of the immigration issue.
The current Republican Party, though, is one whose members see Vladimir Putin twice as favorably as Hillary Clinton. Fortythree percent of Republicans believe that the president should be able to shut down a news operation.
In this new GOP, anyone close to a moderate need not apply. Putnam might be the better Republican for Florida, but his party apparently doesn’t care.