TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Republican Sen. Rick Scott will spend about $10 million on new TV ads in the home stretch of a Senate race in Florida that he is widely seen as leading but where Democrats have continued to make noise.
The Scott TV purchase, first shared with NBC News, will focus primarily on the media markets in Tampa, Orlando and Miami, with spot buys in other parts of the state, campaign advisers said.
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He is running against former Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, who has spent a ton of money but is getting some national help from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee in the final weeks of the race.
The DSCC has committed to a “multi-million dollar” effort to help Mucarsel-Powell, Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party, announced in a call with reporters on Monday. She could not provide a specific figure, and the DSCC declined to offer one. it said in a news release that it was making a multimillion-dollar TV purchase in both Florida and Texas, but did not disclose details.
“That money comes at the right time and we’re going to use it to make sure we build the infrastructure to get Debbie Mucarsel-Powell across the finish line. [and] retire Rick Scott,” Fried said.
Regardless of whatever national money comes to the Democrats, Scott will undoubtedly maintain his long-standing enormous cash advantage. Scott has spent at least $8 million of his personal wealth, and the $10 million media buy is as much as Mucarsel-Powell’s campaign had spent in total at the end of July. According to the most recently available campaign finance reports, Scott’s campaign spent $20 million during that same period.
“Our campaign has taken this race seriously from the start. We are in a strong position and will keep our feet on the gas until the end,” said Scott advisor Chris Hartline.
The race itself has remained somewhat off the national radar as Florida is increasingly seen as a Republican stronghold. But Democrats have thousands of volunteers spread across the state and maintain consistent messaging describing Scott as “in trouble,” underscoring what Scott has long been a relatively low approval rating for a politician who has never run a statewide campaign in Florida lost.
“It’s no surprise that polls show this race to be evenly matched. Floridians know that Rick Scott is far too extreme for our state,” Mucarsel-Powell said. “For fourteen years, Rick Scott has relentlessly attacked our freedoms, hard-earned benefits, and economic opportunity. He has cut funding for our education, our veterans and our coastal communities as our state continues to deal with the impacts of extreme weather, climate change and an affordability crisis that began on his watch.”
Scott has generally acted like an incumbent who expects to win. He hasn’t debated Mucarsel-Powell and has focused less on her than she has on him — a common tactic for a candidate who thinks he or she is winning. His most consistent message has portrayed Mucarsel-Powell as “an open-border socialist.”
Public polling in the race generally had Scott at the top, but not by large margins. It has risen everywhere from the high single digits to just a handful of percentage points. Because the race was so close on paper, it has fueled Democrats’ message that the race is theirs for the taking.
New polls shared with NBC News from Republican polling firm Tyson Group have Scott up 46-38, with an uncertain 12%, an 8-point margin — outside the margin of error — that is among the largest polling gaps of the election cycle.
Hartline, Scott’s adviser, said it’s margins like that they aren’t concerned about, even with national money flowing into the race.
“National Democrats can flirt with spending in Florida if they want and risk losing establishment races,” he said. “We will have a big victory anyway.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
