Senate Democratic Leader Nan Rich said Tuesday she is seriously considering a 2014 run for governor.
In an interview with the News Service of Florida, Rich said Gov. Rick Scott’s priorities have been made clear by the budget he proposed and the one he signed – and that she thinks most Floridians don’t share his priorities.
“I don’t think anybody could say that education and human services are our priorities,” Rich said. “Those are areas where I’ve spent a lot of time both in and out of public service.
“I think I would be a good governor,” Rich said.
She cautioned that she hasn’t definitively made up her mind, and said she likely wouldn’t make an announcement until after the coming legislative session, which will require her heavy focus on redistricting.
She said that even if she waits until she’s out of office in November 2012, there would be plenty of time to run a primary campaign, and if she wins, mount a challenge to the Republican governor.
“That gives me two years to travel the state and express my vision for where we should be going,” Rich said.
In a short interview, however, Rich sounded like a candidate.
“I feel I have experience and the passion and the commitment,” Rich said. “…I’ve focused a lot on education and children’s issues, and senior services, and I feel those things are still extremely important and they should be the focus of the state,” said Rich.
A children’s advocate before she was elected, Rich has been in the Legislature since 2000. She was elected to the Senate in 2004. Rich also served as national president of the 90,000 member National Council of Jewish Women from 1996-1999.
Rich criticized the Scott economic agenda for focusing on creating jobs in a short-term strategy that, she said, ignores the underpinnings of what make an economy successful – primarily education that makes people employable.
The Legislature cut funding to prekindergarten, for example, Rich said. “The things that actually create the ability to create jobs, these are the things we should be making priorities.”
Rich, if she runs, would likely make children’s policy a top campaign stump issue, as it has been in her years in the Legislature. But she’d also likely go hard at the governor on education, hoping to capitalize on the mistrust many teachers have of Scott, who has pushed for merit pay, and to maximize the support of the state’s teachers union, the Florida Education Association, which has been a major backer of the last several Democratic candidates for governor.
Rich, 69, who would be the first Democratic candidate out of the gate, said she is talking to potential supporters “to make a judicious decision.”
Rich’s interest in the governor’s race was first reported by Broward County political blog BrowardBeat.com.
Scott hasn’t actually said whether he’s planning to run for re-election, though he has implied it several times. He defeated Democrat Alex Sink in November by less than 100,000 votes out of more than 5 million cast.
Sink, 63, hasn’t said whether she plans another run.
By David Royse
