Rick Scott closes Q1 with nearly $3.8M cash on hand. That doesn’t tell the whole story though

Rick Scott’s latest fundraising report with the Federal Election Commission, which covers activity through March 31, is like gauging the size of an iceberg by looking at the tip.

Scott closed the quarter with $3,782,782 in cash on hand, a relatively modest number not reflective of his campaign’s ultimate spending capacity. Of that money, the campaign raised $1,103,113 since the beginning of the year, spending  $1,561,459. Other authorized committees poured in $1,066,588.

Of course, the formal fundraising report tells only part of the story. He raised a total of $2.5 million between his campaign and three other committees in Q1, along with $140,000 for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. A PAC backing Scott also raised $1.4 million.

Beyond that, there’s his ability to self-fund.

As Roll Call noted in 2018, Scott put $63.6 million into his successful race against former Democratic U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson. He poured more than $75 million into his 2010 race for Governor, where he ran as an outsider candidate who toppled a Republican backed by many establishment elements of the party.

Scott will face a Primary, but it appears any competition he has is already tapped out financially. Keith Gross, who made a lot of noise last year as he launched a challenge to the Naples Republican, closed the quarter with under $30,000 on hand, against nearly $1.75 million in campaign debts.

Scott’s likely General Election opponent, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, reported raising $3.5 million in Q1.

That number includes, per a release from the campaign, an “average donation of just $39 in Q1” from 90,000 total donations, including from all of Florida’s congressional districts, and “not a dime in self-funding.”

Mucarsel-Powell’s fundraising puts her in a stronger position than Primary opponent Stanley Campbell, whose campaign has been seeded with a million-dollar personal loan from the candidate, but who closed March with less than $772,000 cash on hand.

Another political perennial, former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, is running yet again, but he’s resource-starved. The Central Florida Democrat has a little more than $41,000 on hand, against more than $3.415 million in campaign debts.