If Scott’s past elections are any measure, he’ll likely tap some of his prodigious personal fortune. | Getty Scott running for Senate in epic showdown with Nelson

TALLAHASSEE — Florida Gov. Rick Scott made his long-awaited Senate candidacy official Monday, setting up an epic battle against incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson and testing the limits of whether a close alliance with President Donald Trump is political poison or a pathway to success in the nation’s biggest swing state.

Scott has never shied away from his friendship with Trump — who has repeatedly urged him to run against Nelson, Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat. And regardless of the constant string of White House controversies, Scott has distanced himself from the president only to the mildest of degrees.


But the self-made Scott, who was born poor and raised in public housing, then won the Florida governor’s mansion as a political novice, wants everyone to know that he’s his own man.

“I consider myself Rick Scott. I don’t consider myself any type of anything,” the governor told POLITICO in an exclusive interview Sunday when asked whether he considers himself a “Donald Trump Republican.”

As he launched his candidacy in Orlando on Monday morning, Scott positioned himself as an outsider. “Some people will tell you that as governor I never really fit in or played by the political rules in Tallahassee. Well, that is true. I never planned to fit in," Scott told the crowd, according to prepared remarks. "And I won’t fit in in Washington either. It’s time to shake that place up. We don’t need another politician in Washington; it’s full of politicians, and that’s why it’s broken."

The Scott-Nelson matchup will be one of the nation’s most closely watched Senate races this year as national Republicans try to hold on to control of the House and Senate against an energized Democratic base.

“I run on what I believe in. I’ve been very clear,” Scott told POLITICO on Sunday. “People ask me that a bunch of times, about ‘Are you this or are you that?’ No. I’m Rick Scott. I grew up poor. I believe in jobs.”

That line is almost an understatement for Scott: The “jobs” message is the raison d'être for his political identity, born in 2010 when faith in the state and national economy was low and unemployment numbers were high. “Jobs, jobs, jobs” was Scott’s mantra in English and, during phone-banking campaign stops in Miami in 2010 and 2014, in Spanish: “trabajo, trabajo, trabajo.”

“What I focused on when I got elected was getting 700,000 jobs over seven years and changing the direction of the state,” Scott told POLITICO. “And the business community has really shown up. We cut their taxes, reduced regulation, and we’ve added right about 1.5 million jobs.”

Scott’s longtime confidante Jackie Schutz, who has worked on both his gubernatorial campaigns and is his outgoing chief of staff, will serve as Senate campaign manager. She said the campaign will soon outline a full plate of policy proposals but did say that pushing for federal term limits will be one of Scott‘s top priorities.

Democrats with the Senate Majority super PAC greeted Scott’s likely arrival in the race by announcing Sunday they would embark on a “six-figure” digital ad buy featuring a video that recounted how Scott cut K-12 education by $1.3 billion in his first year in office, failed to expand Medicaid under Obamacare and was rocked by a Medicare fraud scandal that happened under Scott’s watch at his former hospital chain, Columbia/HCA, in the 1990s.

“If he didn’t look out for you here, he won’t look out for you there,” the ad says of Scott’s ambitions in Washington.

Many of those attacks have been unsuccessfully used against Scott in past races, and he now counts boosting education funding as one of his top achievements during his eight years in the governor’s mansion.

Democrats are also trying to tie Scott to the deaths of 14 seniors at a Broward County nursing home after Hurricane Irma last year and a fatal pedestrian bridge collapse last month that killed six in Miami-Dade County.

But unlike in his past elections, Scott faces a three-term incumbent in Nelson who has won a total of five statewide races over his career. And unlike in 2010 and 2014 — when voters punished then-President Barack Obama’s Democrats at the polls — Republicans face what could be an even bigger revolt with the party that controls the White House.

Trump will likely be the biggest trump card Democrats play, considering the role the president’s lack of popularity played in three recent contested bellwether Florida elections won by Democrats in Florida’s 40th state Senate District, St. Petersburg’s mayoral race and Florida’s 72nd state House District.

No governor in the nation has been so tied to Trump as Scott, who was one of the most prominent politicians to back Trump’s presidential run. He also chaired a super PAC for Trump that raised $20 million for him. Scott has often touted how his close ties to the White House have benefited Florida under Trump, who often spends weekends and holidays at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach County.

Repeatedly, Trump has privately and publicly called on Scott to run for Senate.

"I hope this man right here, Rick Scott, runs for the Senate,” Trump said last year after visiting Fort Myers and Naples, Scott’s hometown, to see firsthand the damage from Hurricane Irma.

So does Scott want Trump to campaign for him?

He won’t say.

“I’m going to campaign for this job. I know there are going to be people that like what I’m saying. There are going to be people who don’t like what I’m saying,” Scott said. “Let’s go back to 2010. No one, I don’t believe hardly anybody, endorsed me in 2010. Did that faze me? No. Whether they do or whether they don’t, I’m doing what I believe in.”

Asked whether he thought Trump would be an asset, Scott said “you guys are the pundits. You guys can figure that out. I’m going to campaign. I’m going to campaign aggressively. And I’m going to tell them exactly why people should vote for me. It’s no different from what I did in 2010. I told people from Day One, this is what I’m going to do. And eventually people came along.”

Scott recently had a notable, although somewhat orchestrated, departure from Trump on offshore oil drilling. Scott pushed back after the U.S. Interior Department initially put Florida on the list of states that could see increased offshore oil drilling over the next five years. Days later, Florida was “off the table.” It was his first high-profile break with Trump, but Scott says he won’t hesitate to do so moving forward.

“If it’s good for us, I’m going to support what the White House wants to do,” he said. “If it’s not good for Florida, I’m going to oppose. I’m not going to be a rubber stamp for anybody.”

Most polls taken of the Scott-Nelson race show a tie, with many giving an inside-the-error-margin edge to Nelson. However, polling by the Republican-affiliated Associated Industries of Florida finds that Scott might be leading by as many as 7 points.

“While it’s hard to envision any competitive, top-ticket race in this state being won by 7 percent, or 500,000 votes, as this sample currently shows the race, it is understandable why the governor has this lead on Nelson with such high job approval, image ratings and positive direction of the state under his watch,” said Ryan Tyson, AIF’s vice president of political operations.

The group has raised money for Scott but built its early polling on a model with 39 percent Democrats and 39 percent Republicans, with the remainder having no major party affiliation. In a normal midterm, Republicans are assumed to have a turnout advantage, but there is a belief among many that an unpopular White House could prompt a “blue wave,” which has prompted the group to use an even-partisan sample.

If Scott’s past elections are any measure, he’ll likely tap some of his prodigious personal fortune. He spent about $13 million of his own money in 2014, when his reelection cost more than $100 million. And, as a newcomer in 2010, he spent at least $73 million of his own money.

“I’m planning on winning. I’m going to run to win,” Scott said in response to a question about personally financing his campaign. “I’m committed to raising the resources required, just like I did in 2014. I’m going to aggressively travel the state and tell people why they need to support me. But we’ll see.”

One of the first concrete signs Scott was beginning to focus on the Senate race was the sidelining of Let’s Get to Work, a state political committee that he has used to smash every Florida fundraising record. Scott had stopped raising money for the committee, and last week filed paperwork with state election officials to officially sever his ties with the other committee.

Scott’s focus had turned to New Republicans, a federal super PAC run by his longtime staffer and political adviser Melissa Stone. The committee is branded as pro-Trump but has quickly filled up on money from traditional state donors. The committee’s website previously included a Scott video and his signature on the homepage as chairman, both of which have since been removed. Once a formal candidate, Scott can’t legally coordinate with any super PAC backing his candidacy.

While Scott’s jobs message has ultimately prevailed in his past two elections, he has and will face criticism over whether he moved the goal posts in promising 700,000 jobs in seven years. In 2010, he said the 700,000 would be “on top of what normal growth would be,” making it about 1.7 million. Later, he scrapped that talking point and took credit for the first 700,000 jobs, as well as the following 800,000.

Democratic-aligned groups have started the “Rick’s Recession” campaign, focusing on a report critical of Scott‘s jobs efforts. Compiled by top economists for Florida’s GOP-led state Legislature, the report found that 36 mostly rural Florida counties had lost jobs since 2007, which encompasses Scott’s two terms in office.

“A majority of Florida’s counties, especially those in rural areas, are actually worse off today than they were before the recession hit,” according to the organization’s website, which was set up by For our Future Action Fund.

Scott won the counties highlighted by the group by a total of 130,000 votes during his reelection in 2014, a big number in a state whose statewide elections are often won on razor-thin margins. Scott’s jobs department immediately pushed back against the campaign in December, when it was unveiled. Administration officials said the group cherry-picked numbers rather than using more accurate monthly job reports.

“As many Floridians choose to live in one county and work in another, using this information on its own, as the website chose to do, will paint an incomplete picture,” read the memo from the state Department of Economic Development, overseen by Scott.

If Scott’s past two campaigns are any measure, Nelson can get ready for a barrage of negative ads like those that buried Scott’s previous opponents. Considering it could cost more than $3 million weekly for saturation TV advertising across Florida’s 10 media markets, the race could easily top the $100 million mark and perhaps hit $150 million — making it among the most expensive in the nation.

Nelson is one of 10 Democrats running for reelection in states Trump won in 2016, and Washington Republicans are happy that Scott could help self-fund some of the cost to outgun Nelson, while Democrats are left emptying their coffers to defend the pricey seat.

But for all of the talk of Scott’s toughness and his unexpected wins, Democrats point out he has won ugly and has never received 50 percent of the statewide vote, or won by more than 2 percentage points.

As a governor, Scott has evolved politically. He has slowly shifted away from the hard-right tea party politics that infused his first run in 2010. Before his 2014 reelection, Scott reversed himself and signed legislation giving in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants who went to Florida high school students — often referred to as Dreamers — who were brought illegally as children to the U.S. by their parents.

More recently, he moderated his position on offshore oil drilling. And, after being a reliable National Rifle Association supporter, he bucked the organization by signing legislation that instituted a first-ever Florida requirement that buyers of long guns wait three days before their purchase and be 21 years of age or older.

On the eve of his formal announcement to run for the Senate, Scott even joked about his decision to challenge Nelson as the worst-kept secret in Florida politics.

“You’re probably surprised, but I’m going to announce I’m running for senator,” Scott told POLITICO. “You’re shocked, right?”