Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera told Sunshine State News on Tuesday he is “strongly considering” running for the U.S. Senate in 2016 even as he draws fire from Democrats and conservatives.
At Gov. Rick Scott’s “Economic Growth Summit” at Walt Disney World, Lopez-Cantera said he was not in the race yet and did not offer a timeline for his decision but he did express interest in jumping in the contest to replace U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. Currently running for the Republican presidential nomination, Rubio has said he will not run for a second term in the Senate.
“I’m not a candidate for the U.S. Senate, I’m just strongly considering it,” Lopez-Cantera told Sunshine State News.
Asked about how national conservative groups are lining up behind U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who entered the race last month, Lopez-Cantera said he was more than happy to talk with right-of-center critics including former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli who is now the president of the Senate Conservatives Fund. Cuccinelli, whose group is behind DeSantis, went on the attack against Lopez-Cantera last month.
“Carlos Lopez-Cantera is not a conservative,” Cuccinelli told the Palm Beach Post. “He supported Charlie Crist‘s budget that raised taxes by $2.2 billion, he supported in-state tuition for illegal aliens, and he’s supported wasteful spending at the state level. If he runs, we will actively oppose his nomination.”
Lopez-Cantera dismissed this criticism on Tuesday.
“I’ve never met Ken Cucinelli, I hear good things about him,” Lopez-Cantera told Sunshine State News, adding he would be “happy” to meet with him and talk about the “conservative accomplishments that I have been part of here in Florida”
National Democrats are starting to take Lopez-Cantera seriously as a potential Senate candidate in 2016. On Tuesday, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee (DSCC) hit Lopez-Cantera for bringing in Washington lawyer Charlie Spies to set up his super-PAC. Spies had set up former Gov. Jeb Bush’s Right to Rise PAC.
Sadies Weiner, the national press secretary for the DSCC, tried to tie Lopez-Cantera to questions about how Bush has used Right to Rise.
“It’s no surprise that Carlos Lopez-Cantera is already flirting with the boundaries of campaign finance law even before he announces his candidacy for Senate,” Weiner said on Tuesday. “Lopez-Cantera knows that he will need his own personal super-PAC to prop up his candidacy, and it’s clear that he’s willing to push any legal boundary to boost his campaign.”
With DeSantis already running, besides Lopez-Cantera, other possible Republican candidates include U.S. Reps. Curt Clawson, Jeff Miller and David Jolly, former Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum and businessman Randy Fine.
On the Democratic side, U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy is already running and U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson is considering entering the race.
Ed Dean, a senior editor with SSN whose talk-show can be heard on radio stations across Florida, can be reached at ed@sunshinestatenews.com. Follow him on Twitter: @eddeanradio. Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or follow him on Twitter: @KevinDerbySSN
