TALLAHASSEE

Gov. Rick Scott enters the second half of his four-year term in some ways a far different politician from the one who shocked the Florida establishment in 2010 by winning his first-ever race for public office.

Scott has notably moderated some of the controversial positions taken in his outsider’s gubernatorial run and first year in office, on issues ranging from health care to immigration, education and, most recently, election law.

In other ways, he remains the same staunch conservative who has pushed job creation through a pro-business, less-government and anti-regulation agenda.

He hits the mid-point of his tenure with dismal public approval ratings that threaten to invite intra-party turmoil and perhaps even a primary challenger in his 2014 re-election bid.

His biggest challenge in Year 3 — the first of the Scott era that offers the hope of less dire budget conditions — will be to make more headway on his signature campaign promise to create 700,000 jobs over seven years. But along the way he will need to shore up his personal appeal to voters to defend his flank, and deliver on key state needs such as education, homeowners’ insurance costs and public health so he can aggressively confront expected fierce Democratic opposition in 2014.

It is a tall order for a former hospital executive still making the transition from the business world to governing and political combat.

Scott says he is happy with his progress so far and ready for what is to come.

“I told them what I was going to do,” he said of his campaign promises. “I’m going to watch out how your money was spent. I’m going to hold government accountable. I’m going to follow the Constitution. So the things that I believe in — there are all sorts of different groups that believe in what I’m doing.”

But critics say Scott is losing traction and more likely to go down than up, pointing to negative polling numbers that have not improved in the governor’s first two years in office.

Screven Watson, a Democratic strategist, said voters “have made up their minds early on this guy.”

“His numbers never improve. When he gets bad press, he just falls,” Watson said. “I really don’t think he can remake himself.”

Scott’s political future is tied to a large chart he keeps in his Capitol office that details job growth in Florida since December 2010 — the month before he was sworn in as Florida’s 45th governor.

Through October, Scott was claiming credit for the creation of more than 174,000 private sector jobs — which after netting out the loss of government jobs would give Florida more than 150,000 new positions.

The pace is short of the 100,000 new jobs each year that Scott would need to meet his pledge to create 700,000 jobs in seven years. Scott’s critics also say the numbers are well short of his original promise to create the additional jobs on top of Florida’s “normal growth” — an interpretation that Scott’s aides dispute.

In his favor is a November projection from state economists that showed Florida’s non-farm workers should grow to more than 8 million by July 2017 — an increase of more than 700,000 jobs from the state’s workforce of 7.23 million in July 2011.

The question for Scott is how much credit he will get for Florida’s economy over the next two years. Scott contends that his policies — sharply cutting government spending, including numerous state jobs and reducing regulations — have set the stage for a comeback. He says he has made Florida an attractive place for businesses to locate, which will spur job growth.

Much like President Barack Obama in the 2012 presidential election, Scott admits he would like to see stronger job growth. But, as Obama did, he also emphasizes the dismal economic circumstances he inherited when he took office. He says considerable progress has been made since.

“Let’s think about where we were,” Scott said, citing an 11.1 percent unemployment rate in December 2010, the loss of 825,000 jobs in the four years before he took office and a real estate market on the verge of collapse.

Now Scott cites the 3 percentage point drop in the unemployment rate — the largest decline in the nation — job growth, increases in tourism, improving home sales and higher consumer confidence in the state.

“We’ve had a dramatic change in where we were,” Scott said. “I think we’re absolutely headed in the right direction.”

Scott has aggressively pursued a policy to improve Florida’s ports in anticipation of the widening of the Panama Canal and increased trade from Central and South America. He points to a dredging project at the port of Miami that is projected to add 33,000 jobs. He has also been on seven foreign trade missions, trying to raise Florida’s profile.

But critics say Florida’s job growth is occurring in spite of Scott, not because of his policies. They say his spending cuts — while simultaneously pursuing corporate tax reductions — have hindered economic growth. The rejection of a $2.4 billion federal grant for high speed rail was particularly harmful, they say, as well as cuts to spending for schools.

Former Gov. Charlie Crist, who may challenge Scott in 2014, called the rejection of the high-speed rail system one of a number of “disappointing” decisions by Scott.

“De-funding education — $1.3 billion the first year — as a public school kid, that really bothered me and disappointed me,” Crist told reporters last month when he registered as a Democrat in St. Petersburg. “The way the environment’s being treated, the disabled. We could go on, but I won’t.”

Critics say Scott cannot point to significant businesses that have moved to Florida, and that the real limit on jobs growth is the lagging housing sector, which was overbuilt in the real estate boom and is only now starting to rebound.

In his first weeks in office, Scott signaled his ideological leaning when he unveiled his first budget proposal at a Tea Party rally in Central Florida.

By the end of his first legislative session, Scott’s approval ratings had dropped to 29 percent. Since then, he and Republicans have been on a mission to push them back up.

In the last year, Scott also has advocated several major education initiatives, including efforts to better link university and college degrees with Florida’s future economy. An opponent of rising tuition, Scott recently challenged the state’s colleges to develop $10,000 degree programs, which 12 of the 28 colleges already have endorsed.

But Scott’s education record is mixed.

He endorsed the $1.3 billion cut in public school funding during his first year, which Scott blamed on a drop in federal funding. He also pushed a $1 billion increase in this year’s budget. State universities had their state funding cut by $300 million this year.

Scott has championed a number of efficiency moves, ranging from cutting regulations to revamping multi-million-dollar state contracts to eliminating the use of two state planes. Scott, himself a multi-millionaire, set a personal example by declining the governor’s $130,273 annual salary.

He also has cut taxes. Scott has promised to eliminate the state corporate income tax by 2018. But so far, he has only won approval from the Legislature to increase the exemption for small businesses from the tax, which he wants to raise to $75,000 in the next year.

If approved, Scott said that would eliminate the tax for 80 percent of the businesses that paid it — although the state will continue to collect more than $2 billion annually in corporate taxes from the larger companies. Scott said his goal is to ultimately eliminate the entire tax, banking on increasing sales tax collections as Florida’s economy improves in the next few years.

Scott, who narrowly won the 2010 election, has never been a popular figure with Florida voters.

A recent poll from Quinnipiac University showed only 36 percent of the voters approved of his efforts as governor, with 45 percent disapproving.

Those upside-down approval numbers have been consistent throughout his term, with Scott reaching his highest approval rating of 41 percent in May.

Quinnipiac pollster Peter Brown called the trend “pretty awful,” and said while Scott will have nearly two years to try to change voters’ minds before the 2014 election, he faces a “Herculean” task.

“Some politicians really click with voters having nothing to do with their issue positions, some don’t,” Brown said. “Mr. Scott’s numbers are maybe as much a personal as policy question with voters.”

Scott’s supporters say Floridians are more concerned with the economy than Scott’s personality. They maintain that voters will ultimately give Scott credit for a stronger economy when he faces re-election in November 2014.

“Rick Scott is not set up to play the standard grip-and-grin political game in a lot of ways,” said Rick Wilson, a Republican strategist.

“But he is staying very focused on the fundamentals, particularly on job creation and on attracting businesses. I think at the end of the day that is going to pay off.”

Other observers say Scott’s economic focus is winning supporters.

“He has solidified some support among the business community with his regulatory relief and his nonstop focus on job creation and making Florida more competitive,” said Susan MacManus, a political scientist from the University of South Florida.

But MacManus said Scott’s handling of the recent election — which drew national criticism — “eroded some public support,” and his mixed signals on school funding may be a problem with many voters who consider education a top priority.

Scott said voters will evaluate his bottom-line impact on Florida’s families.

“There’s a greater chance that they’ll have a job. Their child will get an education so that they can live the American dream,” he said.

Their tax dollars, he added, “won’t be wasted.”