NAPLES, Fla. — Florida Gov. Rick Scott says he’ll win Democrat Bill Nelson’s Senate seat on Nov. 6, in part because Nelson hasn’t put in enough time helping Floridians, especially after Hurricane Michael.
“We’re going to win,” Scott, a Republican, told the Washington Examiner in an interview Monday outside a natural food store in Naples, his hometown.
A big factor in that prediction is how Floridians see Nelson after Hurricane Michael devastated the Florida Panhandle. Scott says Nelson essentially abandoned people there, while he has been traveling regularly to the region to help the recovery effort.
“The guy is a quitter,” Scott said of Nelson. “He did three or four days up in the Panhandle and said, ‘That’s all I can do,’ and he’s not going back.”
Scott will know in a week if he’s right, but, in the meantime, he’s trusting his own sense of the reliability of polls. Current polls suggest the race will be close — a CBS/YouGov poll shows the race tied at 46 percent, while a New York Times/Siena poll shows Nelson, the incumbent, leading 48-44.
On average, polls give Nelson about a 2 percent lead, but Scott’s campaign says their own internal polls indicate Scott is up by several points and Scott says he’s proven the polls wrong before.
“Just remember, every poll said I was going to lose in 2010 and 2014,” he said. “All the polls, all the polls, said I would lose.”
In Scott’s last election in 2014, he very narrowly beat Democrat Charlie Crist, a former Republican, by a 1-point margin.
Scott also says things are about to get better for him and worse for his opponent as voters make their final choice. He portrays Nelson as a politician who is merely punching the clock rather than doing the hard work of governing.
Nelson is 76 and has logged more than four decades in elected government. Scott is 65 and, before entering politics in 2010, he earned considerable wealth as a venture capitalist.
[Also read: Rick Scott highlights family’s illnesses to tout support for pre-existing condition coverage]
The Nelson campaign accuses Scott of being untrustworthy and cites media reports that claim Scott “has numerous investments he hid from the public in companies, corporations, partnerships, and funds that stand to benefit from his administration’s actions.” But Scott denies ever allowing his own investments to influence his decision-making as governor.
Scott says President Trump, who won Florida narrowly in 2016, is another factor that will help him. Trump will hold a rally in support of the GOP ticket on Wednesday in Ft. Myers, Fla.
Scott declined to delve into the criticisms of Trump by the media and Democrats in recent days that have suggested his rhetoric inspires acts of violence, including the Jewish temple shooting in Pittsburgh on Sunday. But he said the president should use his trip to Florida on Wednesday to amplify GOP successes in the Sunshine State.
“He ought to brag about what we’ve done,” Scott told the Washington Examiner. “We’ve cut taxes by 10 billion, we’ve paid off almost $11 million in debt, we’ve cut 5,400 regulations. I hope he comes down and says, ‘I’m going to do exactly what Florida did, because it works.’”
Naples has long been considered a GOP stronghold. Chad Gillenwater, treasurer of the Collier County Republican Executive Committee, has knocked on hundreds of doors this election cycle and said he believes the momentum is on Scott’s side, regardless of the polls suggesting Nelson holds an edge.
He predicts Scott and the GOP ticket will win by five to 10 points.
“I think that this whole resistance movement by the Democrats has hurt them, because people want positive, not negative,” Gillenwater told the Washington Examiner.
But Democrats say Florida is in position to reject GOP candidates this cycle.
Helen Wagner, who arrived at the Naples Government Center to cast an early ballot on Monday, said Democrats will prevail “if we get the young ones out to vote.”
She brought her son, 18, who cast his first-ever ballot for Nelson.
Wagner, a lifelong Democrat from New York, blames Scott for the proliferation of red tide, which she said drove away tourists and hurt her pilates business.
Northeast transplants like Wagner are part of the reason Florida is shifting from a red state to a swing state. A New York times analysis in 2012 found only 36 percent of Florida residents were born in the state and 23 percent came from somewhere in the Northeast.
“I think Scott did a terrible job,” said Jim, a retiree from New Jersey and a lifelong Democrat who declined to give his last name, as he left the Naples library. “He did nothing to help the environment, he did not expand Medicaid.”
Wagner and Jim said they are deeply opposed to Trump.
Janice Oakes, a Naples retiree from Rhode Island, said she’s voting for Scott and the GOP ticket. Trump, she said, “is getting things done, more than other people.”
But she added, “I wish he’d stop tweeting.”
Oakes isn’t sure if Scott will prevail over Nelson, but Scott is very popular in Naples.
“All my neighbors are voting Republican,” she said.
