Eight years with Gov. Scott at helm
Jobs, water pollution and political battles
TALLAHASSEE – When Rick Scott ran for governor in 2010, he was a political neophyte who barely met the requirement of being a Florida resident for at least seven years. He entered office facing double-digit unemployment, a massive budget shortfall, a miffed GOP-led Legislature and incensed Democrats.
On Jan. 8, he’ll depart Tallahassee as a political veteran who spent more than $150 million of his own money to win three of the most sharp-elbowed, heavily financed and closest political contests in state history.
He also leaves behind a complicated legacy of booming employment numbers, chronically polluted waterways, a reshaped and slimmed-down state bureaucracy and a string of awkward encounters with citizens, lawmakers and – in one memorable instance — a king.
When Scott took office in January 2011, the state unemployment rate was 10.8 percent; as of November the rate was 3.3 percent, the lowest since 2006.
He made an economic turnaround his number one priority, seeking to be known as the “jobs governor.” He calls it his signature accomplishment.
“If I had one regret, I’d like to have even more jobs,” Scott told the Orlando Sentinel in a recent interview. “I want all the best jobs in our state.”
Scott pushed an agenda of tax cuts, eliminating regulations and reducing government spending. He also cold-called company executives to pitch a move to the Sunshine State and took business development trips overseas to encourage job growth back home.
His even went to other U.S. states, all of which had Demo-
cratic governors, a move slammed by critics as job poaching. One quixotic move included a pitch to move Yale University to Florida, which the school declined to do.
But for supporters, his daily focus on the economy is what made him succeed.
“Because of his style, his methodical style, that relentless nature that he’s just going to keep on plugging away with relentless laserlike focus on his goals, as long as he succeeded in those goals he knew he would turn it around in terms of public opinion and perception,” said Brian Burgess, a former spokesman for Scott during his first term.
Rough start
The tone of much of Scott’s administration was set in the first few months, when he made a series of moves that upset Republican and Democratic lawmakers. He sold state planes without legislative approval, killed a federal highspeed rail project from Orlando to Tampa and ordered drug testing of all state employees, a move later overturned by the courts.
Scott had plunked down $60 million of his own cash on his bid for governor in 2010, upsetting GOP establishment favorite Bill McCollum in the Republican primary in that tea party year, which complicated his relationship with Republican lawmakers.
But the Legislature, while rejecting some of Scott’s priorities, still pushed through a series of controversial bills that upset and energized a dormant Democratic base. They tied teacher pay to student test scores; ordered drug testing of welfare recipients (also overturned by the courts); required mandatory ultrasounds for women seeking abortions; cut environmental conservation funds; and eliminated a growth management agency. They did so while passing massive cuts to education to fill a $3.7 billion shortfall.
A few pivots
The moves made Scott, who signed all the bills, one of the most unpopular governors in the country. Democratic and progressive groups attacked his every move, sometimes in bizarre ways, such as when a group of Satanists mockingly praised him at a 2013 rally.
His aloof style compounded the problem, making him the butt of latenight talk show jokes. Scott’s encounter with King Juan Carlos of Spain, for example, induced guffaws when he repeatedly mentioned the monarch’s hunting trip to Africa where the king killed an elephant, a much-derided moment.
Yet, Scott kept driving his core message of turning around the economy.
“Somehow he went from one issue to another, and you kind of even forgot one issue existed,” said former Democratic House Leader Mark Pafford. “What he did successfully was [to] redefine those individual issues like the environment, like health care . . . and linked everything to jobs.”
As the economy rebounded and jobs steadily increased, his poll numbers started to climb – aided by a shift from Scott on his previous policies on immigration, health care and government spending.
When critics bashed him for budget cuts the first year, he dropped his campaign pledge to cut government and drummed home the point that those initial cuts the first year allowed for future growth.
After campaigning on strict immigration enforcement policies, Scott abandoned requiring police to check the immigration status of suspects and forcing businesses to check the status of prospective workers after lawmakers failed to pass them his first year in office.
Scott embraced Hispanic issues, even learning Spanish to appeal to a pivotal bloc of voters. In 2014 he signed a bill allowing children brought to Florida illegally by their parents to pay in-state tuition rates at universities.
“Of course, there were going to be growing pains,” Burgess said. “He comes in as an outsider, and he’s going to change the way we do things in the state. Of course, there’s a little bit of a learning curve.”
But as Scott geared up for his 2014 re-election campaign to bash Charlie Crist, a Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat as an inveterate flip-flopper, he was engaged in some waffling of his own.
Scott rose to prominence as a staunch opponent of Obamacare but embraced a limited form of Medicaid expansion under the federal health care law in 2013. GOP House leaders rejected it. He continued to back it in 2014, but as Republican state senators readied a push for a similar policy in 2015 after the election he rejected the plan.
Scott also cut budgets for water management districts, reduced regulations on industrial polluters and signed a bill repealing a law aimed at cracking down on septic tank pollution. But when he ran for the Senate this year, he touted large increases in environmental spending to preserve springs and waterways.
Despite those investments, red tide and green algae fouled Florida waters for much of the year.
His transformation from an unschooled Tallahassee outsider into a political shark impressed even opponents.
“He was pretty cunning in that regard,” Pafford said. “I think the guy in the last eight years learned Spanish? That’s not easy, and he did a very good job at that.”
The killing of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in 2012 sparked a nationwide debate over Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which initially led Sanford police to not charge Zimmerman after he claimed self-defense.
Under pressure, Scott reassigned the prosecutor in the case (Zimmerman was charged with murder but ultimately acquitted) and convened a task force to review the law. But despite calls from black lawmakers and the Dream Defenders, activists who held a monthlong sit-in at the Capitol in 2013, Scott backed only minor changes to it.
Scott also signed several bills easing gun regulations and making it easier to get concealed carry permits. He didn’t change course after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Orlando in 2016 that left 49 dead and 53 wounded, viewing it as terrorism rather than a gun control issue, even telling one interviewer that the “Second Amendment didn’t kill anybody.”
But his outlook changed after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland on Feb. 14, where 17 students and staff died. Students marched on the Capitol demanding gun control measures. Scott backed a slate of new proposals, eventually signing a law that restricted gun purchases to those 21 and older.
“I responded to what happened; they’re totally different issues. In Pulse it was a terrorist attack,” Scott said. “What I’ve done in each of these situations is respond to what happened in that case to try to improve the state. I want our citizens to be safe.’’
Trump and the Senate
Scott was one of the earliest admirers of Donald Trump’s run for president, which put him in the future president’s good graces but also complicated his run for the Senate this year.
Scott tried to keep his distance from Trump’s twitter outbursts and controversial moves, even running ads in Spanish saying he would stand up to Trump when he disagreed with him. But he also touted federal funds for things like Herbert Hoover Dike repairs he attributed to his relationship with the president.
As Scott prepares to join the U.S. Senate, he says he will be taking his same pragmatic approach in Tallahassee to Washington, now in the throes of a government shutdown.
“In Florida, this didn’t happen here,” Scott said. “Even though everybody didn’t agree on everything, we were able to come to an agreement.”