The race for Florida's Republican gubernatorial nomination -- in which billionaire Rick Scott has soared to an overnight, 13-point lead -- may have narrowed to one question: Which candidate would be better for the state's economy?
Scott touts his experience as president and CEO of hospital giant Columbia/HCA and signs off his omnipresent TV ads with the challenge, "Let's get to work."
Attorney General Bill McCollum, a lifetime civil servant and politician, unveiled an economic plan he says will "create half a million jobs in Florida over the next six years."
Politically speaking, "It's Mr. Outside vs. Mr. Inside," said Barney Bishop, president and CEO of Associated Industries of Florida.
From the vantage point of the executive suite, those roles are reversed.
GOP voters this season have cast a decided preference for candidates who are pro-business and, better yet, have business backgrounds.
California Republicans on Tuesday nominated two former CEOs in that state's U.S. Senate and gubernatorial races. Carly Fiorina (former head of Hewlett-Packard) and Meg Whitman (former chief at eBay) each beat career politicians for their party's nod.
Like Fiorina and Whitman, Scott, a first-time candidate, is playing the political "outsider" card, and spending millions of dollars in doing so.
But Scott is carrying baggage that the victorious California CEOs don't. Scott resigned from the company he had built into the nation's largest for-profit hospital chain when the federal government fined it $1.7 billion for fraudulent billing.
Scott says he has learned from his "mistakes," which he ascribes to spending too much time on health-care issues and too little on his company's accounting systems.
The bottom line, Scott says, is that he oversaw a sprawling national corporation that employed nearly 300,000 workers in the hyper-competitive health-care field. That scale of market-based experience, he suggests, qualifies him to diagnose and remedy the economic ills of the country's fourth largest state.
One stark comparison is in how many private-sector jobs the two candidates can claim to have created.
For McCollum, 65, whose government career track runs from serving as a lawyer in the Navy JAG Corps to serving in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1981-2001, the direct answer would be zero.
For Scott, 57, the number of jobs created run into the tens of thousands. He estimates that "20,000-plus" U.S. jobs were added at Columbia/HCA during his time there.
As co-founder of Solantic, a chain of urgent-care centers, Scott takes credit for adding 600 positions at 34 clinics across the state. He figures "thousands more" jobs were developed nationally through other start-ups he has been involved in over the years.
Scott's TV spots, alluding heavily to business experience, have quickly boosted his standing in the polls. The latest survey, which Quinnipiac released Thursday morning, sent him streaking into first place by 13 percentage points over a once-comfortable McCollum.
But political observers say the ghosts of HCA wield a two-edged sword that could impale the former hospital boss.
"People say, 'If you're going to be a corporate CEO, you should have known about (the fraud issues) and done something about it,'" said Susan MacManus, a political science professor at the University of South Florida.
MacManus said skepticism is especially strong among older voters, who constitute a large percentage of the GOP's midterm turnout.
McCollum, along with Democrats, has hammered at Scott's stewardship at Columbia/HCA, implying that bad experience in the private sector is arguably worse than no experience at all.
"Rick Scotts record is one marked by overseeing massive Medicare fraud, before his own board ousted him from the company and was forced to pay a record $1.7 billion fine for defrauding taxpayers including Florida residents and seniors," said Kristy Campbell, spokeswoman for McCollum's campaign.
On April 15, the attorney general announced an economic package that promises "tax relief to businesses to spur job creation" and "a new course on energy diversification and independence" while "removing regulatory roadblocks." See McCollum's plan here.
"Bill McCollum is the only candidate is this race that has put forward a comprehensive and substantive plan to create more than 500,000 new jobs in Florida in six years, cut taxes, cut spending and reform government," Campbell said.
McCollum's agenda is in sync with a recent Leadership Florida poll, which found that voters want candidates who will retain business, not just bring in new companies.
"That's somewhat of a change in public opinion," MacManus said in reference to the use of local and state tax incentives.
"Growth is a positive when tied to job creation," she said.
While McCollum's job-creation claims cry out for verification, Scott recites almost identical talking points of lower taxes, less regulation and an improved climate for business.
"Florida ranks 45th in terms of business regulation. Business people feel harassed, and we need to look at that," Scott says.
When pressed for specifics, the candidate promised that he would release a detailed economic plan "in about three weeks."
Meantime, Scott believes he has the background to serve effectively as a trade ambassador to the business world because he's been in the shoes of executives and knows how to measure results.
"You have to figure out how to solve their needs. I know what it feels like to pay taxes and deal with regulations that don't make sense," he said.
"Ideologically, the two men are very close," said AIF's Bishop, who added that his group plans to make an endorsement in the race in the next few weeks.
Bishop said the candidate who makes retention of business and "access to capital" priorities in his platform will be well positioned to grow Florida's economy and create jobs.
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Reach Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
