Rick Scott gets a bargain

Governor spent $15.50 for each vote he got for U.S. Senate campaign

Gov. Rick Scott poured an eyepopping $63.6 million of his personal fortune into his race for U.S. Senate race — and spent his money wisely.

For one thing, he won, defeating U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla.

Florida had some other big spenders in 2018, but none came close to Scott — and they lost.

On a per vote basis, Scott spent $15.50 of his own money for each of the 4,099,505 votes he received.

That’s a far greater return than the other two big spending Floridians in 2018: Jeff Greene and Philip Levine.

Greene and Levine are wealthy Democratic businessmen who spent heavily from their own pockets in unsuccessful attempts to win their party’s gubernatorial nomination.

Greene spent $35.6 million of his fortune on his campaign and through is Florida Defense Fund political committee. He received 152,955 votes in the Aug. 28 primary. That works out to a whopping $232.58 per vote.

Levine spent somewhat less: $29.2 million of his own money on his campaign and his All About Florida political committee. And he received double the number of votes Greene got in the Democratic primary: 308,801.

That puts Levine’s cost per vote at $94.70. Less expensive than Greene’s votes, but still no victory.

“Money doesn’t buy victory. It’s never bought victory. If you don’t have a good message, if you are out of step with where the voters are, you can spend all the money in the world and it won’t get you the win,” said Charles Zelden, a professor of history and legal studies who specializes in politics and voting at Nova Southeastern University.

Money helps a lot, he said. “If you are in step with your voters and you do have a message that resonates, money gives you advantages,” Zelden said. “Your own money means you don’t have to worry about getting money from

other people. You don’t have to spend all that time on the phone begging for money.”

Scott is the kind of candidate who had the ability to quickly pump $1 million into one television market, which can make a big difference in a close race, Zelden said. Money undoubtedly had an impact. Scott won 50.05 percent of the vote to Nelson’s 49.93 percent in the Nov. 6 election.

In the last three weeks of the campaign, Scott put more than $12.5 million of his own money into the effort, according to a report filed Thursday with the Federal Election Commission.

Scott put more of his fortune into his race than any other Senate candidate in the country, reports the Center for Responsive Politics.

“This has been his story all along. He bought his way into winning the [Republican] primary [for governor] in 2010 over an establishment candidate who was as conservative as he was. And once he got the nomination, the tides were going to sweep whoever the Republican was in because that was the year of the tea party,” Zelden said. “He spent enough money to get reelected, again by a very narrow margin.”

“Imagine if he didn’t spend all this money, he wouldn’t have won,” Zelden said. “It’s an expensive investment.

When you’re worth what he is, I guess $60 million doesn’t seem like a bad investment.”

Scott reported net worth this year of $232 million.

In 2010, he spent $75 million of his own money on the gubernatorial campaign and $13 million on his 2014 reelection.

Some of Scott’s spending

could be considered aimed at his party’s primary, but he had no serious primary challengers and his entire operation, including spending long before the primary the primary, were aimed entirely at Nelson.

“Scott won in large part by running millions of dollars of negative ads against Nelson before Nelson ever lifted a finger because Nelson didn’t have the money to spend and Scott did,” Zelden said. “So Nelson lost the advantage of incumbency at the beginning of the election.”

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