Rick Scott takes swipe at Ron DeSantis after midterm victory lap in Florida

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) is rekindling his feud with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) after Florida partially avoided last week’s midterm blue wave, suggesting that Election Day was actually a letdown for state Republicans and that DeSantis should not be putting the spotlight on himself.In an interview, Scott said he had not seen the triumphant press conference DeSantis held hours after Republicans kept the governorship, a Senate seat, and other statewide offices. Scott did, however, paint a far less rosy picture of what happened, citing how narrowly Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), who is replacing the term-limited DeSantis in January, won his race.Scott also mentioned the losses suffered in state legislative races downballot, a setback that means Republicans won’t have a supermajority in the Florida House next year. “I mean, I don’t think success is losing something like 15 or so House seats, state House seats, and losing state Senate seats,” Scott told the Washington Examiner. “I don’t think that’s success.”TED BUDD TO RUN FOR SECOND SENATE TERM IN SWING STATE NORTH CAROLINAThat assessment is sure to raise eyebrows in Florida. DeSantis and Scott, a two-time Florida governor himself, have a long and chilly history that includes periodic jabs about how the other ran the state.At his press conference, DeSantis argued that his eight years as governor “earned some trust with the voters because we delivered” and that he helped juice GOP turnout with a ballot measure that sets Florida on a path to get rid of its property taxes.Scott responded that DeSantis was wrong to take the focus away from the candidates.“I didn’t see his argument,” he said. “I can just tell you Byron ran a great race, and that’s why he won.”Scott made the same comment about his Senate colleague, Sen. Ashley Moody (R-FL), who secured another two years in office last week.“Republican voters, for whatever reason, didn’t show up the way they did two years ago in my race, but both Byron and Ashley ran good races,” Scott said. “And I think you should give credit to the candidates that won, because ultimately, that’s who wins races — is how hard they worked, and if they got their message out.”Scott’s remarks follow a midterm election that swept Republicans out of power in states as deep-red as South Carolina and Mississippi, a fact DeSantis said is what made Florida such an outlier.DeSantis described last Tuesday as something “close to an extinction-level event for Republicans” and argued that his priorities as governor – DeSantis has run the state with a Trumpian flair and light-touch approach to regulation – helped “prevent the worst from happening here.”“To call it a wave, I don’t think would be fully accurate,” DeSantis said during his press conference. “It’s the political equivalent of a meteor strike that went all around the United States, blue states, red states, everything in between. And the one state that was able to hold the line and withstand that is right here in the free state of Florida.”Scott had a lot to say about the midterm elections, calling the outcome nationally a sign that Republicans in Washington were not listening to voters concerned about the economy, corruption, and the size of the national debt.In Florida, his reflections on last Tuesday buck a narrative that could help DeSantis establish himself as a conservative leader for the party two years from now, when President Donald Trump won’t be on the ballot for the first time in a decade.On Wednesday, Scott was not willing to entertain questions about whom he might support as DeSantis appears to be gearing up for another presidential run in 2028. Scott snubbed DeSantis last cycle when he ran for the nomination, endorsing Trump instead.He readily argued, however, that Florida Republicans had not done enough to address voter anxiety about the rising cost of housing, property taxes, and car insurance.Scott also suggested that he left the state in a stronger place in 2018, his final year as governor, than DeSantis is today.“When I left, we had added 1.7 million jobs,” he said. “Last year, we added 70,000 jobs.”The subtle dig is just the latest in a quiet but long-running feud between Scott and DeSantis, who have sparred over everything from who has a better record on disaster response to what policies Florida should pursue on vaccines and abortion access.Republicans did not lose any Florida House seats at the federal level last week, something DeSantis touted as a victory given how poor the political environment was for Republicans.Scott argued, though, that DeSantis’s decision to redraw Florida’s House maps wasn’t the political win Republicans were hoping it would be. The new map put four blue seats further in play, but Democrats managed to hold them all and came close to unseating several Republican incumbents.“It didn’t seem to make our lives easier,” Scott said. “A lot of the incumbent seats, they struggled to make sure they won, but it clearly wasn’t — when they did the redistricting, it wasn’t what they expected.”THUNE REELECTED AS SENATE GOP LEADER AFTER FAILED PUSH TO DELAY VOTEA spokesperson for DeSantis did not respond to a request for comment, but DeSantis said in a series of TV interviews that Florida wasn’t “immune” to the blue wave and instead kept the “line of scrimmage” from shifting as far as other states. That wave was driven, in part, by the war in Iran and Trump’s low approval ratings.On the downballot losses, DeSantis has pinned blame on a “rotten” House speaker who blocked him from carrying out his full legislative agenda. (DeSantis also clashed with that speaker over a since-scrapped corruption investigation that implicated a charity linked to his wife.)