Though the storm will have an impact on every campaign in its path, the spotlight will naturally gravitate toward Florida Gov. Rick Scott, whose favorability rating rose after prior hurricanes. | John Raoux/AP Photo Elections Hurricane set to collide with top Florida races GOP Gov. Rick Scott is cutting a high profile in the homestretch of one of the nation’s closest Senate elections.

A hurricane has Tallahassee right in its forecast path, putting it on a collision course with Florida’s two nationally watched races for governor and U.S. Senate and providing Gov. Rick Scott with a chance for a campaign windfall.

Just days before Hurricane Michael formed in the Gulf of Mexico, Scott’s Senate campaign coincidentally began running an ad touting his leadership after hurricanes Hermine and Matthew in 2016 and Irma in 2017. This latest storm offers him another high-profile, take-charge moment in the homestretch of one of the nation’s tightest Senate races.


The governor’s race is also feeling the impact of hurricane politics: a social media fight broke out over negative TV ads running as storm prep begins. Democrat Andrew Gillum pulled his TV spots from media markets set to be walloped by the storm, while his Republican opponent Ron DeSantis did not.

As a result, Democrats have collectively been pointing fingers at Republicans for what they say is unseemly politicking as a potentially life-threatening storm approaches. At the same time, the GOP was quietly griping about Democratic trackers following Scott at official storm briefings.

Though the storm will have an impact on every campaign in its path, the spotlight will naturally gravitate toward Scott, whose favorability ratings rose after prior hurricanes. Scott, who is challenging Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, is repeating the formula that served him and his predecessors well: ostensibly leave the campaign trail behind and appear at emergency operations centers as the state executive leading and issuing warnings and updates in a time of crisis.

That approach ensures that Floridians throughout the state can see the governor on the local news or the Weather Channel — just as voters are casting absentee ballots in the run-up to Election Day. So far, nearly 2.6 million ballots have already been mailed.

Scott appeared Sunday night briefing residents from the state Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee. On Monday, he traveled to Panama City for a briefing and press conference at the Bay County Emergency Operations Center and then flew to Orlando, where President Donald Trump praised his leadership onstage at a convention of police chiefs.

"This is gold for Rick Scott,” said Brad Coker, a pollster with Mason-Dixon Polling & Research. “It gives him the chance to raise his profile and show he can execute under pressure. It worked for Gov. [Jeb] Bush before him. And it worked for Scott after [Hurricane] Irma.”

As the storm approaches Florida, Scott — who has trailed Nelson marginally in much of the race’s public polling — saw his efforts amplified by Trump.

“I told Rick Scott, ‘We are ready for you,’” Trump said during the event in Orlando on Monday. “We have already briefed FEMA. It looks like a big one. Can you believe it?”

The president’s comments came at the annual convention of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. The planned theme was law enforcement, but both Trump and Scott focused the beginning of their remarks on the storm. Scott used his time to stress his relationship with the Trump administration, which played a big role in Florida’s recovery from a busy 2017 hurricane season.

“We have a hurricane coming to our state right now,” Scott said. “We are doing everything we can to get ready.”

“President Trump could not have done any more than he has,” Scott continued, talking about aid from the federal government after past storms. “He has promised all resources we need.”

Scott’s emergence as the de facto face of the state during storms — coupled with the fact that he is a longtime political ally of Trump — has kneecapped Nelson’s ability to gain attention or tout his own ability to bring federal resources, which run through a White House much more inclined to deliver public credit to Scott.

Scott has already experienced a political adrenaline shot from his past role in overseeing hurricane-preparation and recovery. One month after Irma made landfall in the Florida Keys on Sept. 10, 2017, a Mason-Dixon poll of Florida voters showed 66 percent rated Scott’s handling of the storm as excellent or good. Another 44 percent had a favorable impression of Scott — compared with 33 percent who had an unfavorable view. That meant Scott’s net favorability rating was 11 percentage points — an 8-point improvement from a Mason-Dixon poll Coker had conducted eight months before.

Nelson also rearranged his schedule and visited Bay County’s EOC after Scott. The senator’s campaign, like Scott’s, says Nelson is putting politics aside to prepare for the advent and aftermath of the storm.

“In Bay County today to ensure local officials have everything they need ahead of the storm,” Nelson tweeted Monday afternoon as he met with officials likely to see a direct hit.

Nelson said Monday he asked Scott to extend the Tuesday voter registration deadline for the November election due to the hurricane. Just before midnight, Scott’s administration issued a directive that said any elections office closed due to Hurricane Michael would accept voter registration forms on the next day that the office is opened.

Earlier in the year — with Democrats’ internal polling showing the positive effects of Irma on Scott’s poll numbers — Nelson’s campaign ran a digital ad pointing out how Scott contributors made a handsome profit from hurricane debris removal contracts he let without a bid.

Democrats previously ran another digital ad in which they said Scott had “blood” on his hands for the deaths of seniors at a nursing home that ran out of power. Scott’s office has dismissed the ads as inaccurate political gamesmanship.

But by virtue of his office, the senator can’t compete with the governor’s bully pulpit. Neither can the Democrat who seeks to replace Scott, Andrew Gillum.

As mayor of Tallahassee — which is well within the forecast path of the storm hitting Wednesday — Gillum is getting his share of the news spotlight. But not all of it has been welcome.

Trump took a shot at Gillum while in Orlando on Monday, saying he “runs a place that has a lot of problems, and I know it very well, but it's got a lot of problems, tremendous corruption, tremendous crime."

Gillum quickly responded on Twitter.

“Hey @realDonaldTrump — don't come to my state and talk trash about my city while we are preparing for a Category 3 hurricane. We need a partner right now, not a partisan,” he wrote.

Just days before Hurricane Michael formed, the Republican Party of Florida began running two commercials ( here and here ) attacking Gillum over his handling of Hurricane Hermine in 2016, when a number of Tallahassee residents felt the city didn’t act quickly enough to restore power. Gillum’s campaign responded with a web ad featuring Leon County Sheriff Walt McNeil accusing DeSantis of “lying” about Hermine’s aftermath.

Scott joined in on the criticism of Gillum but was less vocal about power outages in Jacksonville, where his former handpicked state party chairman, Lenny Curry, is mayor and was dealing with the effects of Hurricane Matthew.

Once Michael was forecast to strike Florida, Rep. Charlie Crist — a former governor and an ally of Gillum’s who ran against Scott in 2014 — took to Twitter and called on DeSantis to take down the hurricane-themed attack ads.

“There is a long tradition in Fla. of setting aside partisan differences regarding hurricanes and other emergencies. During Hurricane Season, Ron DeSantis instead chose the Donald Trump playbook, attacking his opponent with disregard for the truth, and weaponizing the struggle ... that everyday Floridians face when in the path of a storm,” Crist wrote. “With Floridians now in the path of Tropical Storm Michael, it's time for all of us to come together, to support those who might be affected by the looming storm. ... The fabric of our state is made stronger by the way Floridians unite in these moments, and rather than ripping us apart with his negative campaign, Ron DeSantis should unite with the rest of Florida, take down his false attack ads, and help those facing down this coming storm.”

DeSantis’ campaign said in a written statement that “we are not going to respond to what are obviously politically motivated comments from Charlie Crist. The ads are scheduled to be cycled out mid-week anyway.”

Like Nelson in his campaign, DeSantis finds himself at a political disadvantage when it comes to media coverage of his candidacy during the storm. The national press is going to pay attention to Tallahassee’s mayor when the city is in the storm’s forecast track, providing Gillum with a chance to prove critics wrong, said Coker.

And as a former congressman who vacated his seat to run for governor, DeSantis has no official office or responsibilities to easily parlay into press coverage.

But for all the poll numbers showing the benefits of leading during a storm, Quinnipiac University’s assistant polling director, Peter A. Brown, cautions that Florida campaigns probably won’t hinge on the upcoming storm. Though Quinnipiac’s poll over time showed that Scott’s approval ratings improved before and after Irma in 2017, it didn’t conduct its surveys immediately before and after the storm to get a more exact read.

“In polling language, the ‘n’ on this — the number of hurricanes that have occurred — is very small. It’s not a good random sample. There aren’t enough incidents to say X = Y,” Brown said. “It’s certainly true that there have in past been some incidents where natural disasters or hurricanes have given a couple of governors opportunities to play to their strong suits.”