How does Senator Rick Scott sound?
It's not an election year, but you might have seen some commercials lately featuring Governor Rick Scott. He's keeping up his profile to possibly run for U.S. Senate in the future.
According to our news partners at the Tampa Bay Times, Scott has told some top Republican fundraisers he'd be running in 2018. That's when Democratic Senator Bill Nelson's third term is up.
What is Gov. Scott trying to tell us in those TV ads?
- By Bill Cotterell, Tallahassee.com
"Oh, good, more political campaign ads on TV — I've really missed those since last November," said no one, anywhere, ever.
Just as the 2015 legislative session began, Scott made a 30-second television advertisement. But this time, he doesn't ask for your vote — doesn't even ask you to call your legislators and urge them to back him on some pending legislation, as issues-advocacy ads usually do.
Instead, he makes a little plug for his tax-cut proposals, which may be in trouble as legislators try to head off the potential loss of more than $1 billion in federal funding for hospitals treating poor people.
"One place in America is adding jobs faster than ever — Florida," Scott says in the ad, striding across a lime-green map of the state. Beside the map are some happy-face photos of workers on the job, school children learning and Scott strolling with his wife among white sand dunes.
"We are expanding industry, investing in our ports, making a record commitment to preserving our environment, devoting more resources to education," he says. "Now, working with your legislators, we plan to cut taxes by a half a billion dollars. We believe you can spend your money better than government can."
Then he concludes with an upbeat, "That's a dream come true and that's your Florida."
Those are themes Scott sounded in his "State of the State" speech on opening day of the legislative session, particularly the part about how you can spend your money better than the government can. That's one slogan nobody will argue with; is anyone going to say, "No, please, don't cut my taxes, you guys can spend money much better than I …"
Even some Republican legislative leaders are not so sure about cutting taxes, again, when the prisons are crumbling and the low-income pool for hospitals is in trouble. Democrats would certainly quibble with his claim of raising school support — partly with rising property taxes — and certainly that "record commitment" to the environment counts includes money obligated by Amendment 1 last November.
In his TV spot and his open-day speech, Scott didn't mention how voters mandated that one-third of revenue from the tax on real estate transactions — growth — be devoted to conservation purposes. But he's hardly the first politician to take credit for something that would happen anyway.
The nature and timing of Scott's ads are intriguing.
He's probably not running for anything. Florida already has two presidential hopefuls for 2016, either one of whom has approval ratings well above Scott's in any recent poll. Scott could be thinking of the U.S. Senate, if Sen. Marco Rubio runs for president, but Rubio could wash out in Iowa or New Hampshire and still have plenty of time to come back home and run for re-election.
And besides, Scott is an executive kind of guy. It's hard to think of him running a tough campaign to become one of 100.
This cheerful little advertisement was paid for by Let's Get to Work, the governor's political action committee. Finance records show he pulled $580,000 from the Republican Party of Florida on Jan. 16 and, a few days later, the committee spent $207,000 on "consulting."
Therefore, it's probably safe to assume that this TV spot is not the last we'll be seeing in the session. If the past is any indication, they will probably get more specific on issues and will ask viewers to do something, like call or write to their legislators, asking them to get on Scott's side.
There's nothing new about issues advertising. The Seminole Tribe was already up with a TV spot urging support for a new gambling compact and there's one urging the Legislature to fund an Everglades land-acquisition deal worth about $300 million. In past years, the insurance companies and trial lawyers have slugged it out over medical malpractice changes and affected companies have financed their own legislative interests.
But those are advertisements by people wanting to make money off of this or that legislative issue. Governors and Cabinet members always travel the state, cadging free media exposure to promote their programs, but Scott is the first governor to go on TV with a spot that says — what, exactly? Things are going well and we hope to cut taxes some more?
Not counting that blunt line that you can spend your money better than government, Scott's ad uses the old sales technique of assuming the viewer is already on board with whatever he's selling. Five times in 30 seconds, Scott uses the words "we," "our" and "your," as if to indicate that we're in this together.
Perhaps future TV spots will tell us why Scott's campaign committee is spending so freely to tell us things are going so well.
