Scott & Mucarsel-Powell exchange barbs about how many votes they did NOT get on Tuesday

Republican U.S. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, U.S. Sen. Rick Scott, and U.S. Rep. Laurel Lee in St. Pete Beach on May 27, 2024. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)Let the negativity begin.

Actually, the war of words between Rick Scott and his Democratic U.S. Senate opponent, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, has been robust over the past year. But it’s now set to go into overdrive after both became their respective political party’s candidates for the Senate following Tuesday’s primary election.

On a Zoom call with party chair Nikki Fried and several individuals who won school board races on Tuesday, Mucarsel-Powell crowed over the fact that despite relatively nominal opposition, Scott’s two Republican opponents, Keith Gross and John S. Columbus, combined to take16% of the statewide vote.

That still left Scott with a massive 84%, but a combined 237,194 votes of Republicans didn’t choose him.

Screenshot of Debbie Mucarsel-Powell during a Zoom conference call on May 22, 2024.

“Rick Scott has won his previous three elections by a combined 135,000 votes,” Mucarsel-Powell noted about the Naples Republican’s three incredibly tight victories as governor in 2010 and 2014 and the U.S. Senate in 2018. “Well, last night, 237,000 Republicans voted against him in the primary last night. Don’t tell me we can’t defeat Rick Scott.”

Mucarsel-Powell was accurate in assessing the relatively slim margins of victory that Scott has amassed in his previous elections, but whether the fact that he only received 84% of the vote on Tuesday might not suggest he’s vulnerable this fall.

A better statistic that Team Mucarsel-Powell and the Florida Democrats have seized upon is the lowly approval numbers that the Florida senator garnered in a survey released last week. The USA Today/Suffolk University/WSVN survey of 500 likely voters had Scott upside down with Florida voters, viewed favorably by only 35% of respondents with 49% showing disapproval.

Weak in Miami-Dade

While those numbers have buoyed the Mucarsel-Powell campaign, the Scott team on Wednesday pounced on another set of voting statistics that emerged after the primary election: Mucarsel-Powell’s voting totals in Miami-Dade County, her home region.

The Democrat received 66% of the vote in a four-person primary on Tuesday in Miami-Dade, with tech entrepreneur Stanley Campbell drawing 24% and the two other candidates, Brian Rush and Rod Joseph, combining for another 10%. It should be noted that while Campbell resides in Broward County, he was born and raised in Liberty City, a neighborhood in Miami.

“Heading into November, Senator Scott received over 26,000 more votes than Debbie in her home county. It was also his best performing county in the state,” says a memo from the Scott campaign released Wednesday.

“Mucarsel-Powell couldn’t even get more votes than Senator Scott in her home Miami-Dade County, which is especially embarrassing,” said Team Scott spokesperson Will Hampson in a statement.

“Meanwhile, Senator Scott received more votes than all the Democratic candidates combined. Democrats are in for a rude awakening come November, and Senator Scott and President Trump are ready to deliver big wins and ensure socialists like Mucarsel-Powell and Kamrade Kamala continue to lose in Florida.”