Rick Scott is exploring the possibility of challenging Bill Nelson in 2018 looking to claim the Holy Grail of Florida politics: moving from the Governor’s Mansion to the U.S. Senate.
History isn’t exactly on Scott’s side. Only three governors in Florida history ever made it to the Senate after their time in Tallahassee: Spessard Holland, Bob Graham and Napoleon Bonaparte Broward who died before he could take his Senate seat.
There are plenty of governors who failed trying to make the leap to Washington. Even some of the best regarded governors in Florida history like Reubin Askew and LeRoy Collins failed in their Senate bids. Looking back at Florida history, governors like Farris Bryant, Fred Cone, David Sholtz, Doyle Carlton and John W. Martin crashed and burned when they sought a Senate seat. More recently, so did Charlie Crist though he did manage to claim a House seat earlier this month. Lawton Chiles is the only Florida politician to ever win the governorship after serving in the Senate.
There’s plenty of reasons for why governors generally fail when they try to move onto the Senate. While his look at Florida in “Southern Politics in State and Nation” is certainly dated, V.O. Key was spot on with some of his points about the Sunshine State. Florida’s geography and demographics make it near impossible for a politician to stay atop the state for too long a period of time. There’s simply too many new voters scattered across ten or more markets for anyone to remain in the saddle for too long. Just ask Jeb Bush who clearly lost out his “Florida’s favorite Republican” title in the last presidential election.
Being stretched out and facing high voter turnover every few years, Florida is almost impossible to politically master. This was true when it was, essentially, a one party state as part of the Democrats’ Solid South. It’s just as true now when presidential and gubernatorial races go down to the wire, even if recent Senate contests haven’t been particularly competitive.
Scott has plenty going for him, of course: a good record on jobs, the GOP having political momentum, the ability to self-fund. But underdogs have a tendency of coming out of nowhere in Florida to catch the favorites. Just ask Scott who did exactly that against Bill McCollum in 2010. Nelson sounds like he’s all in for 2018 but he will be 76 then and could pass the torch to a fresh face--perhaps Gwen Graham if she decides to run for the Senate instead of taking on John Morgan and his endless array of billboard and radio and TV ads in the gubernatorial primary.
Key stressed Florida’s unique political culture, insisting the state was “unbossed” and “unled.” That holds true after more than a half a century even as the Sunshine State gets ready for a battle between two electoral heavyweights in Nelson and Scott.
