Before Tuesday night’s election, Florida Sen. Rick Scott, the head of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, was seriously considering mounting a challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) if Republicans were to retake the Senate.
In September, Scott was coy when asked about whether he’d support McConnell staying on as the party’s Senate leader. This past weekend, the Florida Republican was reluctant to rule out the possibility of challenging McConnell.
According to Politico‘s reporting, which has not been independently verified by the Washington Examiner, Scott had already made a video declaring his intentions to run for party leader. But, according to Politico, Scott changed his mind on Wednesday once it became clear that there was no “red wave” and that Republicans weren’t as likely to take control of the chamber.
RICK SCOTT’S LEADERSHIP UNDER SCRUTINY AMID TEPID GOP SENATE GAINS
Scott’s advisers disputed the report and said the Florida senator is not ruling anything out but emphasized he has been focused on raising money to help Republican Herschel Walker in next month’s Georgia Senate runoff.
“Lots of people have urged him to consider running, but his focus is entirely on the ongoing counts in Arizona and Nevada and raising money for the Georgia runoff,” said Chris Hartline, Scott’s spokesman.
McConnell previously voiced concerns about “candidate quality” in Republicans’ pursuit to gain control of the Senate, a reference to GOP nominees endorsed by the former president, who successfully purged the party of many centrist candidates he viewed as disloyal. As a result, McConnell’s super PAC pulled out of several races after it lost confidence in GOP nominees in states such as Arizona and New Hampshire.
The feud between the GOP Senate leader and the largest figure in the Republican Party has brought with it intraparty division. Earlier this week, Donald Trump slammed McConnell as a “lousy leader” in an interview with Fox News Digital and said he’d force Senate Republicans to replace McConnell as their leader if he wins the presidency in 2024. Scott, who embraced the former president’s candidates and helped raise money for them, was looking to climb the ladder.
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This summer, Scott and McConnell clashed, presenting two separate strategies for winning the Senate in the fall. According to reporting from the Washington Post, at a Senate lunch, both McConnell and Scott asked their colleagues to donate to each of their respective super PACs. This set off a battle in which senators essentially were asked to choose sides.
Scott ran unopposed last year in the race to chair the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Just a couple of weeks ago, Scott said his party was prepared to take a 55-seat majority. It wasn’t until this week that Scott abandoned his plan to run for party leader, once the results of the 2022 midterm elections became clearer.
