Florida Senate Race Starts Recount after Rick Scott's First Calls (UPDATE)

UPDATE: The Florida Senate race between incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson and Gov. Rick Scott (right) prepares for a recount that could begin Wednesday.

Scott claimed victory Tuesday night, but Nelson said on Wednesday that he would not give in.

Florida law triggers a judicial recount ordered by the Secretary of State when the margin of victory is 0.5% or less. According to unofficial results, Scott leads Nelson at 0.42%.

Florida Governor Rick Scott overthrew Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, a big step forward in the hopes of Republicans retaining their majority in the US Senate, or even strengthening it.

Scott, 65, will join Marco Rubio in Washington in January, offering the state two Republican senators for the first time since the Reconstruction. Nelson, 76, was looking for his fourth six-year term after his tenure as state insurance commissioner and, before that, twelve years in the House as a member of the Space Coast Congress.

Scott is completing two terms as Director General of the State and could not request a third term because of term limits. He was seen as one of the strongest GOP recruits to win Democrat Senate seats, and his victory will likely prevent Democrats from winning back the Senate in this election.

Scott's two previous election victories had been squeakers – 1.1 percentage points each time – and his Senate victory will likely be even smaller, less than one percentage point, by the time all votes are counted.

Florida has now three times elected to the state office the man who, in the 1990s, ran the chain of for-profit hospitals that had agreed to pay $ 1.7 billion worth of money. Fine for systematically defrauding Medicare, Medicaid and veterans health programs. Scott invoked his right under the Fifth Amendment not to incriminate himself 75 times during a testimony in a related civil lawsuit about his role in the fraud committed by Columbia / HCA.

In Scott's first run as governor in 2010, his Republican opponent of the lead candidate and Democratic candidate Alex Sink used the story in negative ads against him. But Scott was willing to spend freely with his personal fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars and managed to win close victories against both.

In 2014, Scott was barely reelected against Charlie Crist, who was a Republican governor before Scott, but who has since become a Democrat.

In fact, Scott's popularity only broke 50% steadily in 2017, after his generally well-regarded management of Hurricane Irma. This improvement in his number of polls, in addition to his constant willingness to spend a lot of money on his own campaigns, made the national republicans believe that Scott had a good chance of defeating Nelson, whose two previous reelections had been opposed to weak opponents.

However, all this was happening before this summer, when the red tide worsened along the southwestern coast of Florida and that thick, blue-green algae from Lake Okeechobee began to stifle Fort Myers in the Gulf of Mexico and Stuart in the Atlantic Ocean. When freshwater algae reach the coast on salt water, they die and release toxins into the water and into the air – and, according to scientists, provide an additional source of food for red tide bacteria , natural. The result was the death of millions of fish, sea turtles, dolphins and manatees, whose carcasses were washed away on the beaches and added a stink of rot already in the bitter air. toxins from the red tide.

Many environmentalists have blamed Scott for the calamity. It had reduced the budgets of the agencies responsible for preserving the water quality of Lake Okeechobee and facilitated the enforcement efforts of the polluters.

Scott had to face protests late this summer during campaign stops in Fort Myers and Venice, two Republican strongholds. He largely refrained from visiting the coastal countryside as the red tide extended to the east coast of Florida. He then stopped campaigning completely after Hurricane Michael hit the Panhandle last month.

Scott, however, had the advantage of running for the Senate as sitting governor. Voters of a state are well known to voters and can boast of their daily achievements, while senators do not have this level of visibility. The last outgoing senator to lose his election in Florida was indeed beaten by a governor: Democrat Bob Graham toppled Republican Senator Paula Hawkins in 1986.

In the end, the advantage of this tyrannical pulpit combined with the tens of millions of dollars that Scott had invested in his race was enough to win.