Nelson concedes after Fla. recount
Gov. Scott’s victory boosts GOP Senate majority to 52 seats
Three-term Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson has conceded to Florida’s Republican Gov. Rick Scott, in a bitter and drawn-out race to retain his seat after a series of failed legal challenges and underwhelming preliminary results from a manual statewide recount left the incumbent with almost no path to victory.
Nelson conceded in a phone call to Scott, according to a statement from the Scott campaign, even though results of the race are not due to be certified until Tuesday.
“I just spoke with Sen. Bill Nelson, who graciously conceded, and I thanked him for his years of public service,” Scott said in a statement. “This victory would not be possible without the hard work of so many people. Now the campaign truly is behind us, and that’s where we need to leave it. We must do what Americans have always done — come together for the good of our state and our country.”
The governor ended his statement by saying, “Let’s get to work.”
Nelson, for his part, said in remarks posted on Twitter that things had worked out “a little differently” from the way he and his wife had hoped. Hewent on to issue a call for bipartisanship in an era of brutally divisive politics.
“We have to move beyond a politics that aims not just to defeat but to destroy — where truth is threatened as disposable, where falsehoods abound and that the free press is assaulted as the enemy of the people,” Nelson said. “There has been a gathering darkness in our politics in recent years.”
Scott’s victory boosts the Republican Senate majority to 52, with a final seat in Mississippi due to be decided in a Nov. 27 runoff. In a statement, Scott thanked Nelson for his service.
Going into the recount, Nelson trailed Scott by more than 12,000 votes, and his campaign had hoped a re-examination of ballots — particularly in heavily Democratic Broward County — would help him close the gap.
But the recount ended midday Sunday with Scott leading Nelson by 10,033 votes Nelson After speaking with Sen. Bill Nelson on Sunday, Florida Gov. Rick Scott said in a statement: “Let’s get to work.” after the machine and manual recounts had been completed, according to the Florida Division of Elections, leaving Nelson without a path to victory.
The outcome of the recount means Florida, the nation’s third-most-populous state, will be represented by two GOP senators.
The Senate race was one of the most closely watched in the country, and scrutiny further intensified in the wake of Election Day as Scott’s lead narrowed and it became clear the race was headed toward a recount.
Therecount attracted legal challenges and allegations of voter fraud — once again putting Florida in the national spotlight, harking back to a similarly drawn-out process after the 2000 presidential election.
Together, the Nelson and Scott campaigns racked up at least 10 lawsuits trying to gain legal advantage in the recount. Protesters descended on county election offices, where officials scrambled to tally ballots in scenes reminiscent of the 2000 recount battle between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
Republicans also sought to cast doubt on the validity of the results, with President Donald Trump making unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud and arguing the recount should halt, even though it was mandated by state law.
A machine recount that preceded the hand recount did settle Florida’s closely watched gubernatorial race, with Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum conceding to Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., on Saturday.
The hard-fought Senate race played out in a state where shifting demographics are transforming the political landscape. Republicans retain an advantage among Florida’s older white retirees, but the state’s younger, nonwhite population is surging, with many of those Democratic-leaning people now reaching voting age.
“People are not happy that the blue wave hit the rest of the country and missed Florida,” Jacob Sanders, a Democratic consultant in St. Lucie County, told The Post. “People are looking around and saying, ‘What happened?’ The recount was a really good way to make people stop asking. There’s going to be a reckoning now.”
On Friday, officials in Miami-Dade County concluded Nelson gained only 181 votes in the manual recount — and in heavily Democratic Broward, just to the north, preliminary results did not bode well for him, either.
Broward officials reported Friday that they had recorded more than 30,000 “undervote” ballots, in which no candidate appeared to be selected. Going into the manual recount, Nelson’s campaign had hoped that large numbers of ballots with no recorded vote in the Senate race would be revealed as votes for the Democrat once they were examined by hand. But that did not occur.
As Nelson’s campaign was receiving the results in Broward and Miami-Dade, it was also absorbing losses in three lawsuits filed by Democrats and voting rights advocates that could have benefited his campaign. Democrats lost what may have been Nelson’s final legal recourse Friday with a federal judge’s decision denying a request to accept some mail-in ballots received after Election Day.