The new year will be an important one for both of Florida’s two U.S. senators.
Democrat Bill Nelson will face the most immediate pressure as he looks at running for a fourth term in 2018 when he will be 76. Nelson has said he intends to run again but the GOP has momentum in Florida. Still, Nelson has always run ahead of other Democrats, outpacing Al Gore in 2000 and Barack Obama in 2012. Nelson’s folksy demeanor has often helped him win over independents in the Sunshine State and he does carry areas where Democrats haven’t been strong in recent elections.
Nelson will have some challenges in 2017. He needs to oppose Donald Trump enough to fire up his Democratic base without coming off as a shrill partisan. But, during his time in the Senate, Nelson has faced that situation before. He’ll have to do it again if he decides to run again.
On the Republican side, there are already some possible candidates making noise. Most of the attention has gone to Rick Scott but Tom Rooney could also make a run at Nelson. Still, this is Florida and there have been plenty of candidates who have emerged at the last minute with little in the way of electoral experience. That could happen again in this Senate race.
Marco Rubio faces a different set of challenges as he begins his second term in the Senate. With a new staff, Rubio is showing more signs of being content in the upper chamber as part of the majority and without his attention locked on a presidential bid. Rubio could take another shot at the presidency down the road but Trump is blocking his path for the next eight years.
All this being the case, Rubio’s increasingly active on foreign policy. It’s been a focus of his since he was first elected and he’s grown increasingly active on the Foreign Affairs Committee, especially after Trump knocked him out of the presidential race.
Rubio will have an early test on where he goes at the start of 2017. When Trump nominated Rex Tillerson to run the State Department, Rubio expressed some major reservations, pointing to his ties with the Putin regime in Russia. Much of the GOP establishment has fallen in line behind Tillerson but Rubio could pose a major problem for Tillerson’s nomination. If all the Democrats on the Foreign Affairs Committee unite against the nomination, it would only take a single Republican to block Tillerson from reaching the Senate floor. At the very least, Rubio will have his chance to grill Tillerson at the hearings.
Both Nelson and Rubio will face different challenges in 2017 with high stakes. Nelson’s are far more immediate but Rubio also has a lot on the line in the new year.
