Powered by a $50 million, self-financed campaign, Rick Scott upended the Florida Republican establishment Tuesday, defeating Attorney General Bill McCollum for the GOP gubernatorial nomination following the most expensive and one of the most bitter primary battles in state history.
Scott emerges as a candidate who effectively is a party of one – having run against the GOP leadership and even airing hard-hitting TV ads which tarred McCollum’s ties to indicted former Florida Republican Party Chairman Jim Greer.
McCollum was slow to concede, after the Associated Press and major TV networks had called the race, and even after the Republican Governors Association in a statement said, “Rick Scott is the nominee.” A spokeswoman said late Tuesday, however, that McCollum would concede, likely around midnight.
“With a deep sense of humility, I’m here tonight to accept the Republican nomination for the office of governor of our great state of Florida,” Scott said. “The people of Florida have spoken, and I like what they’ve said.”
For many, it’s hard to imagine the party patching up its differences with Scott before the November general election against Democrat Alex Sink, who easily captured her party’s nomination Tuesday.
“I think it’s all up to Rick Scott,” said Al Cardenas, a former Florida Republican Party chairman. “We’ve had hard primaries before. But the winner has been magnanimous. We’ll see this time.”
Lew Oliver, the Orange County Republican chairman, said the party is eager to join with Scott.
“I’ll cry for Bill McCollum for 60 seconds, but then we’ll move on,” Oliver said. “It’s what we do. There’s too much at stake in this race for bad feelings to last.”
Scott said the party would unify – despite the fact that a unity rally that had been planned for Wednesday was cancelled for “logistical” reasons.
“The Republican Party will come together” Scott said, because of a “shared devotion to values that make America great.”
But then Scott quickly returned to maverick outsider message, saying that Republican insiders were upset – and he didn’t care. He also promised to continue to fight against political insiders as he moves on to the general election.
“Today’s vote rocked the political establishment,” the Naples businessman told supporters. “Voters have a mind of their own, they found out tonight. It’s sobering news for the special interests. They know I don’t owe them anything.”
Scott predicted that some of the same business groups that backed McCollum in the primary could get behind Democratic nominee Alex Sink, a former banker with strong ties to the state’s business community.
“They like my Democratic opponent,” he said of the independent groups that funneled money to McCollum as the primary grew expensive. “She plays by their rules. So we know what’s next. One group (of political committees) spent millions attacking me. Tomorrow a new gang starts.”
The fierce Republican contest ended Tuesday with Scott and McCollum making last-minute appeals to voters on statewide tours punctuated by heavy rain and continued bad feelings.
As Republicans cancelled their plans to hold the party unity rally Wednesday in Tampa, it wasn’t clear whether McCollum would back Scott.
Hard-feelings among Republican voters may have forced them to the third man in the race – virtual unknown, retired Army colonel Mike McCalister, who was drawing roughly 10 percent of the vote in the bruising primary after having spent less than $8,000 on his campaign. McCalister’s suddent prominence was seen by most as a protest vote.
“Who’s Mike McCalister?” said Senate President-designate Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, after attempting to assure the small, subdued crowd gathered at McCollum’s election party.
But it’s Scott – who jumped into the race in April and largely paid his own way to victory – Florida Republicans now must get used to. While McCollum ran strongly in his home Central Florida, he was outpaced by Scott in the Jacksonville area and the populous Tampa Bay area. McCollum ran stronger in South Florida, but both Republican contenders may have been hurt by the anti-illegal immigration theme they endorsed.
Although the race ended with statewide flyarounds, the Republican campaign has mostly been a TV war. Scott and his wife, Ann, have poured $50 million of the couple’s own money into the race – much of it buying dozens of hard-hitting ads that dismissed McCollum as a career politician.
McCollum, while far outspent, still managed to pump $23 million into the campaign, helped by 527 spending committees which have drawn cash from some of Florida’s biggest corporations and party leaders.
House Speaker-designate Dean Cannon, R-Winter Park, and Haridopolos combined to spend more than $1.1 million on McCollum’s behalf through political committees they control. It proved a bad bet.
The two leaders were among a crowd of party insiders joining McCollum at his election night party in Altamonte Springs, part of the Central Florida congressional district he served more than 20 years before two unsuccessful runs for U.S. Senate. McCollum was elected attorney general in 2006.
House Speaker Larry Cretul, R-Ocala, served as m.c. of the event. But with election returns showing Scott holding a narrow lead for most of the night, the 100 or so supporters gathered at a suburban hotel remained subdued.
“It’s going to be a great night,” Agriculture Commisssioner Charlie Bronson said, although he sounded less-than-convinced. “It may be a little bit longer night because the numbers aren’t coming in as fast as we thought they would. But that’s politics.”
Cretul called McCollum a “rock-solid conservative.” Bronson cast him as a “very principled Republican.”
Tom Gallagher, who lost the 2006 Republican primary to Gov. Charlie Crist, said the McCollum-Scott race had set a new standard for nasty campaign advertising. Whoever the winner, Gallagher said, would face a tough time retooling for a general election contest with Democrat Alex Sink, who easily won her party’s nominee Tuesday.
“I thought I’d had everything thrown at me in my career,” Gallagher said. “But this one has set a new level of mean.”
Scott’s election night event was being held at a Fort Lauderdale hotel. Scott has run his campaign against a headwind of hostility from the state’s Republican establishment – with the former health-care executive worth a reported $218 million even being confronted by a heckler Tuesday afternoon as he cast his ballot near his Naples home.
Shortly after Scott told reporters, “I’m convinced that we’re going to win,” a man self-identified as “Dr. Dave” who has been following the campaign for days called on Scott to “release the deposition,” a reference to a sealed statement the candidate has given in a lawsuit against his company, Solantic, Inc.
The heckler, outfitted in scrubs, has been following the campaign in a car also bearing the statement demanding that Scott make public the deposition. Scott’s campaign says the stunt is likely financed by one of the 527s backing McCollum.
These political committees have far outstripped the $7 million McCollum raised for his own campaign – benefiting from such cash injections at $500,000 from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and millions of dollars from builders, transportation companies and medical organizations around the state, which have used the committees to skirt the state’s $500 individual contribution limit to a candidate.
By John Kennedy
The News Service of Florida
