Rick Scott vows to back Florida needs over GOP priorities in Senate

As the race for Senate heats up, Gov. Rick Scott is taking incumbent Bill Nelson to task for being a “party line” voter in D.C.

The case, distilled: while Nelson may have been a moderate Democrat while in the U.S. House of Representatives, as a Senator he has been a reliable vote for the Democratic agenda.

Scott, who has made a political career out of branding himself as a truth-telling outsider, has taken actions that bely that presentation. Among them: a lapsed-for-the-moment yoking of himself to Pres. Donald Trump, and out-of-state fundraising junkets aided and abetted by, among others, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Scott, when asked Tuesday in Jacksonville about what some would deem a discrepancy, vigorously refuted the claim, saying that he in fact has been a staunch advocate for Florida priorities above all else during his seven plus years as Governor.

“Everybody can look at my track record over the last eight legislative sessions,” Scott said. “I’ve worked to make sure that this is a state where there is work, a state where you can get a job.”

“If you look at education funding, law enforcement funding, the environment, I’m going to work to represent our state while in Washington,” Scott said. “The same thing I’ve done here.”

“As you know,” Scott continued, “the federal government was looking at doing off-shore drilling, and I worked to make sure that didn’t happen off our coast because we care about our environment and we’re a tourism state and I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen, and we won.”

Scott’s remarks likely won’t mollify the concerns of his staunchest critics, including and especially Democrats. Even the win on offshore drilling has been riddled with pitfalls, ranging from seeming contradictions of the position of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke from Interior Department staff, and allegations that Zinke’s declaration that Florida was “off the table” contravened the Hatch Act,

Worth noting: his answer excised what many would see as his deepest deviation from Republican orthodoxy,  his role in crafting and signing the post-Parkland gun control measures, which include blocking gun sales to adults under the age of 21.