News Service Florida Political Blog

It’s not exactly news to ponder whether Gov. Rick Scott would play a role in the GOP presidential primary. While he declined to take sides in the race even when his political idol — Texas Gov. Rick Perry — was in the contest, Scott is an unpopular governor in a swing state during a presidential election year. And Democrats have made it clear that they intend to tie him to the eventual Republican nominee.

That effort by one Democratic ally — public-sector union AFSCME, or American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees — will begin the primary with one-time front-runner Mitt Romney. The former Massachusetts governor, coming off a bruising loss to former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich in South Carolina, has been greeted in the Sunshine State with an ad using the old face-morphing trick.

The ad could be meant to hurt Romney’s chances in the GOP primary — some Democrats feel Gingrich would be an easier out for President Barack Obama in the fall — or it could be an attempt to soften him up for the Obama campaign. Either way, it’s further proof that Scott is likely to be one of the issues in the fall battle over Florida.

It depends on what your definition of “700,000 jobs” is. That’s essentially the debate currently underway between Gov. Rick Scott and those who are parsing his statement in a debate almost a year ago, when the businessman was running for governor. Scott was asked point-blank about how his pledge to create 700,000 jobs would be measured, and he gave an answer that’s now causing a spate of stories about whether he’s changed his view following a more recent interview.

From the debate in question:

Moderator: You have proposed what you call a 7-7-7 plan — seven years, 700,000 jobs, seven steps in seven years to 700,000 jobs, but some state economists have said that if there is an economic recovery, no matter who’s governor, the economy will actually generate more than those 700,000 jobs in just four years. How do you respond to that.

Scott: [It was Scott's first question, so he did the usually thank you's first.] So, our plan is seven steps to 700,000 jobs. And that plan is on top of what normal growth would be. [Emphasis added.]

Scott backed off that metric in an interview with the Sun Sentinel’s editorial board. And several news media outlets have now pointed out that it appears to be different than what he said in the debate (examples are here and here); PolitiFact Florida rated it a “full flop.”

So after a week of getting hammered on the question of what he did (or, in the view of the governor’s office, didn’t) say, Scott decided to “set the record straight” on the promise that was at the heart of his campaign for election, and against which he will be measured when he runs for re-election in 2014. (At least as far as what the state is on pace for, since there will still be more than three years to go before the full seven years are up.) Scott took the unusual step of issuing a five-paragraph statement to the press Friday around lunchtime.

In the statement, Scott tweaks — or clarifies, if you prefer — the idea that the 700,000 jobs would be “on top of what normal growth would be” and says he meant that it would be “regardless of what the economy might otherwise gain or lose.” The governor also says that forecasts, like the ones the question in the debate was focused on, are inherently unreliable.

Instead of focusing on hypotheticals, I’m focused on what I know will be accomplished through my 7-7-7 plan — the creation of 700,000 jobs over seven years regardless of what the economy might otherwise gain or lose. Floridians will judge me not on what an economist in Tallahassee predicts, but on actual job growth each month. [Emphasis not added.]

If there was any remaining doubt, Scott will clearly argue during the 2014 campaign that he meant 700,000 jobs, and that the number of jobs added since he took office has the state on the right track. And his Democratic opponent will almost certainly argue that he should be held to a higher number than that, and the state isn’t on the right track to add that many jobs. To an extent, the argument is likely an academic one; many voters will decide for themselves which pledge they hold Scott to before they cast their ballots.

After the jump, see Scott’s answer to the original question and the statement he issued today.

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Gov. Rick Scott now says he didn’t promise during the 2010 campaign to create 700,000 jobs in addition to normal job growth as part of the 7-7-7 plan he rode to the Governor’s Mansion. The Sun Sentinel:

“Your pledge was for 700,000 in addition to normal growth, wasn’t it?” Scott was asked during a meeting with the Sun Sentinel editorial board.

No, he replied, “700,000.”

The governor’s position hasn’t changed, said spokesman Lane Wright.

“The difference here is nobody knows what normal growth would be,” he said. “What Gov. Scott is saying is no matter what happens around us, Florida will create 700,000 jobs in seven years.”

But, as the Sun Sentinel points out, that’s not what Scott said in the debate last year. The then-businessman was asked point-blank whether Scott’s plan called for 700,000 jobs, period, or 700,000 jobs on top of growth — and he made clear it was the latter. Here’s the video of that question in that debate:

Gov. Rick Scott’s remarks to Conservative Political Action Conference Florida largely followed his well-worn lines from his governorship of the Sunshine State: Getting rid of regulations, drug-testing welfare recipients, job creation. On the latter, he took a joking shot back at Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

“We are clearly competing with Governor Perry in Texas, and we’re going to win,” Scott said.

That was a clear reference to Perry’s line during the Republican presidential debate Thursday, when Perry noted Texas’ place as No. 1 in job creation in some surveys.

“We plan on keeping it that way, Rick,” Perry said, looking at Scott.

On Friday, Scott was before many of the supporters who have continued to give him back despite negative numbers overall. Scott’s disapproval rating was at 50 percent in the latest Quinnipiac University poll, but his popularity among very conservative voters has remained in place. Scott got a rousing reception at CPAC FL. And he encouraged audience members to hold him accountable to his campaign promises, which followed the tea-party line closely.

“If I blink, you should complain loudly,” Scott said.

Add Sunshine State News to the list of outlets with bad polling news for Gov. Rick Scott. According to a survey commissioned by the conservative website, Scott sits at 27 percent approval, 58 percent disapproval. That’s lower than even the dismal 29 percent found by Quinnipiac University earlier this year.

The discontent with Scott appears to be fairly widespread. Scott’s approval rating among Republicans is just 48 percent, compared to 34 percent disapproval. Men, women and voters across all age groups registered majority disapproval of Scott’s job so far. Only among voters 65 and older does his disapproval drop below 60 percent.

The poll was taken July 5-7, shortly after Scott announced his decision to allow the SunRail commuter line in Central Florida to go forward. The decision outraged Scott’s tea-party supporters and apparently did little to buoy the governor’s numbers in the area; Central Florida voters still give Scott a 54 percent disapproval rating and a 28 percent approval rating. Scott’s numbers are even upside down in his home of Southwest Florida, where 50 percent disapprove and 36 percent approve.

SSN’s methodology graf:

This statewide poll was conducted July 5-7 for Sunshine State News with 1,000 registered likely voters. Only voters with prior vote history in general elections 2006 and/or 2008 were contacted. Interviews are randomly selected and conducted from a statewide voter file using our IVR (or automated) polling software which uses a prerecorded voice to ask the questions, with respondents then instructed to score their answers by using their telephone key pads. Interviews are closely monitored to ensure a representative sample of Florida’s electorate is achieved based on geography, party affiliation, gender, age and other demographics; results are sometimes statistically weighted. The margin of error for a sample size of 1,000 interviews is +/- 3.10 percent at the 95 percent confidence level, but higher for subgroups of respondents.

See the crosstabs here.

Gov. Rick Scott said Tuesday he has no set timeline to call an election to replace Sen. Tony Hill, D-Jacksonville, who is quitting a year early to work for new Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown. Hill is a veteran in Tallahassee, having been in the House eight years before being elected to the Senate in 2002.

In Jacksonville on Tuesday to meet with Brown and for an event at Jacksonville Naval Air Station to tout a bill he signed earlier this year, Scott spoke with reporters and said he hasn’t set a special election for the heavily Democratic Jacksonville seat, according to the Florida Times-Union’s Politijax blog.

Scott will remain in Jacksonville tomorrow, working most of the day there – he’ll visit a new terminal at the port to trumpet the eventual addition of 200 jobs. We reported earlier today at the News Service of Florida that the jobs at the new Keystone Terminal and its main customer, Vulcan Materials, were announced a couple years ago before Scott was elected, but they’re still new jobs actually filled on Scott’s watch, and he’ll add them to his jobs created tally.

The numbers that are going to get the most attention from the new Public Policy Polling survey are pretty easy to pick out. Gov. Rick Scott is just shy of supermajority disapproval, with 59 percent of Florida voters saying they don’t like the job he’s doing. And Scott would lose by 22 points to either former Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink (57-35), whom he beat in November, or a newly-minted Democrat in the form of former Gov. Charlie Crist (56-34), whom he replaced.

The president of PPP — which is a Democratic firm but says its polls have been found to skew Republican — put it this way:

“If Charlie Crist has a future in electoral politics it’s probably as a Democrat,” said Dean Debnam, President of Public Policy Polling. “And while he would trounce Rick Scott the reality is that so would a ham sandwich as the Governor continues to become more and more unpopular.”

Part of what the poll also shows, though, is the deep divisions within state politics about Scott. For voters who consider themselves “very liberal,” Scott’s approval rating is just 4 percent, while his disapproval rate among those voters is 96 percent — not that surprising, given that Scott is one of the new crop of aggressive GOP governors most hated by liberals. Even moderate voters disapprove of Scott at a 71 percent clip. And a plurality of “somewhat conservative” voters don’t like the job he’s doing — 47 percent disapprove, to 40 percent who approve.

But very conservative voters still love Scott. A whopping 72 percent of them approve of the governor, who has assiduously worked to curry favor with the tea party movement since the first days of his campaign.

The other numbers follow the same pattern. Crist wins the overwhelming support of liberals, 72 percent of independents and comes with one point — well within the margin of error — of defeating Scott among “somewhat conservative” voters; Scott wins 43-42. But among “very conservative” voters, who weren’t fond of Crist when he was a Republican, Scott waxes the former governor by a 77-16 margin.

Which is basically the case with Sink. She does better consolidating the liberal base — far fewer voters on that side of the spectrum would be undecided — and gets 70 percent of the independent vote. Scott defeats her by just two points among somewhat conservative voters, 43-41 percent, but demolishes her among very conservative voters by an 80-18 count.

Note that Sink does better among very conservative voters than Crist, and you get a picture of just how much they disdain him. The other hint — they want him on the other side. While 33 percent of somewhat conservative voters think Crist should become a Democrat — he’s currently still unaffiliated — 47 percent of very conservative voters want him to join the other party. That’s the highest margin among any ideological segment besides very liberal voters, 58 percent of whom want Crist in their camp.

Methodology notes: survey of 848 Florida voters, conducted June 16-19, margin of error of 3.4 percentage points, automated poll.

The full poll is here.

President Barack Obama has a margin-of-error-proof lead against most of his potential Republican rivals in the key swing state of Florida, according to a new poll.

The survey, released by Public Policy Polling — a Democratic outfit based in North Carolina — shows Obama leading former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by just four points, 47-43 percent. But every other candidate falls short enough of Obama’s lead that the margin of error of 3.4 percentage points doesn’t matter. The other candidates in the poll included as-yet-undeclared (and maybe not running) former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (52-40); tea party darling and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota (49-40); former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (48-40); and pizza magnate Herman Cain (48-37).

The poll was released a day after PPP released a survey of GOP primary voters that showed Romney in the lead for Florida’s delegates.

Every Republican candidate also has an upside-down favorability rating in Florida among voters at large — not to worry, Obama’s job approval rating is also upside-down — with Michele Bachmann’s split of 36 percent favorable, 37 percent unfavorable being the best. Palin has a whopping -21 percentage point margin (37 favorable, 58 unfavorable) and the highest unfavorable to boot. The highest favorable rating is Romney’s 45 percent, with his margin sitting at -4 percentage points.

Obama’s job approval is 48 approve, 49 percent disapprove — pretty close to his national numbers in the Gallup tracking poll now that the bump from the killing of Osama bin Laden seems to have evaporated.

Perhaps more interesting for Florida politicos is that Gov. Rick Scott appears to be hurting the Republican nominee. PPP asked voters if they were more or less likely to vote for the GOP candidate because of Scott’s actions; 40 percent said they would be less likely, compared to 26 percent who said more likely and 34 percent who said it wouldn’t make a difference.

Might naming U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio as a running mate help a prospective Republican candidate? Maybe not. The state’s voters are almost evenly split on whether that would make them more likely (31 percent) or less likely (35 percent) or neither (34 percent) to vote for the GOP nominee. Rubio’s job approval sits at 42 percent approve and 35 percent disapprove.

PPP polled 848 Florida voters from June 16-19. The full survey is here.

The barber for former Gov. Charlie Crist has been cut loose from a state board by Gov. Rick Scott, who shaved Carl Troup‘s name from the list of reappointments he’s issued over the last several days. Troup, who groomed Crist’s locks for years, was a member of the Barber’s Board. But when Troup talked to those who are deciding which appointees Scott should tap again, he apparently ran afoul of the new administration anti-regulation philosophy.

From the Buzz:

He got a call last week from two members of the reappointment board who asked him what parts of Florida barbering law he would like to see better enforced. He said he would like to see a crackdown on licensing, as shops are less frequently inspected than in recent years.

He didn’t hear anything back until Thursday, when the board’s executive director told him he would not be reappointed.

Troup told the Times/Herald bureau he’s not upset.

A new poll from Viewpoint Florida — a GOP-leaning polling firm — shows Gov. Rick Scott‘s numbers are not quite as gloomy as the most recent poll from Quinnipiac University, which showed the governor at a dismal 29 percent approval rating. But Scott is still upside-down in the numbers, with 51 percent disapproving of his job and 45 percent approving.

A few notes from the numbers:

–Scott does far better among men (53 percent approval rating) than among women (39 percent approval rating, with 56 percent disapproving).

–The governor does best with voters 35-49 years old (53 percent approval) and those 65 and over (50 percent approval); his worst numbers are in the 50-64 demographic (58 percent disapprove) and among young voters 18-34 (55 percent disapprove, 51 percent strongly).

–Among Republicans, 72 percent of voters approve of Scott’s job. But 77 percent of Democrats disapprove, including 62 percent who said they strongly disapprove of the governor’s job. Unaffiliated voters are only slightly more negative than the state as a whole: 53 percent disapprove, 43 percent approve.

The automated poll, taken June 16, is weighted and has a margin of error of 2.8 percentage points.

You can see the poll crosstabs here.