The lieutenant governor's office has been locked and dark since March. Has anyone actually noticed?
Probably not.
Certainly the ship of state hasn't somehow sprung a leak -- it's not foundering on the rocks of ruin because there's no lieutenant governor on board.Florida isn't falling into decline, the governor isn't overburdened with the day-to-day, there aren't legions of Floridians going begging because Rick Scott is the Lone Ranger without his Tonto.
But all of those things are almost beside the point.
Scott needs help. He needs good help -- he needs help less with rallying voters a year from November than rallying the Legislature a few months down the road. He needs to find the most charismatic, the most savvy, the toothiest tiger -- male or female, Hispanic, Anglo or African-American -- somebody he trusts implicitly, somebody with whom he has great chemistry.
Scott has tremendous accomplishments to boast, amazing instincts, unwavering free-market principles. The state has moved forward by leaps and bounds since he took office and he should be walking into re-election laughing. Obviously, he's not.
He needs a rank insider to push his priorities on the House and Senate floor. Someone who can smooth over his rough spots, strengthen the connection between him and legislators, giving them a reason to go home and sing the governor's praises.
I have no name in mind. Hopefully, Scott is being better advised this time.
He needs to make that appointment sooner rather than later.
In 2010 Jennifer Carroll was a political decision based on vote-counting. The strategy certainly worked -- Scottwon two brutal elections. But by all accounts, the two never had a real relationship. Add to that his disgust over stories of unsavory staff relationshipsin the LG's office. So, if Scott now dismisses the lieutenant governor role as unimportant, it's certainly understandable.
But that doesn't mean -- as some in the Capitol are increasingly suggesting -- he's better off leaving Carroll's office dark,saving her $510,000 office budget, including the $125,000 annual salary she was paid and the $100,000 earmarked for her chief of staff, John Konkus.The Florida Constitution is explicit that there "shall be" a lieutenant governor. Yes, it's dead silent on the timeline, but presumably, sooner or later, Scott will be obliged to appoint a No. 2 or find himself slapped with a legal challenge.
Right now without a lieutenant, according to the order of gubernatorial succession, if the governor were unable to discharge his duties, the next chief executive of the state of Florida would be Attorney General Pam Bondi; after that, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater.
Kevin Derby of our staff, as knowledgeable a man on the history of state politics as I know, assures me that the political future of a lieutenant governor the minute he accepts the job is pretty much doomed. Yet I've seen four lieutenant governors in particular make a huge difference, keeping good counsel with their governor, on the floor of both chambers fighting for his bills -- Buddy McKay, who served Lawton Chiles with distinction and briefly served as governor when Chiles died in 1998; Frank Brogan and Toni Jennings, both of whom fought vigorously in particular for Jeb Bush's education agenda; and Jeff Kottkamp, tireless worker on the floor and pushing a laundry list of projects for Charlie Crist.
Rick Scott so far in his administration plain hasn't been listening to the right people a lot of the time. For a governor with subtropical approval numbers, appointing the right lieutenant governor, and doing it soon, is a chance for a game-changer of epic proportions. This is an opportunity to listen to good information, to govern better, to fill in the areas that need work and find somebody who knows the players, knows history and knows his or her way around.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423.
