Gov. Rick Scott’s campaign refused to give any response to Trump’s latest call. | Getty Scott goes Trump as DeSantis goes ‘statesman’ in Florida recount

As their victory margins shrank, Florida Republicans Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis took starkly different approaches to the coming recounts now unfolding in their races.

Scott, the outgoing governor and U.S. Senate candidate, has issued a string of baseless accusations that incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson wants to “steal the election.” He urged state police to investigate the possibility of “rampant voter fraud,” for which he provided no evidence and for which no proof has been found by authorities, including a judge who said Monday that both sides should “ramp down the rhetoric.”


DeSantis, the former congressman who ran to succeed the term-limited Scott, took the opposite tack. DeSantis has limited his public comments, called for unity and refrained from mentioning theft or fraud, instead imploring that “everyone involved in the election process strictly adhere to the rule of law which is the foundation for our nation.”

The divergent approaches of the two Republicans to the unfolding controversy gives a glimpse into the new political roles they’re likely to fill in January. Scott, who campaigned as more of a centrist, now sounds the part of the conservative Washington partisan inveighing against liberals and holding the line for President Donald Trump. DeSantis, preparing to take the reins of government in Tallahassee from Scott, is moderating his tone and leaving behind some of the rhetoric that characterizes today’s Trump Republican.

DeSantis was derisively nicknamed a “mini-Trump” during the campaign as Scott kept a measure of distance from the president. But now it’s Scott who sounds like the president. Or it’s the president who sounds like Scott.

On Monday, Trump continued to push the voter fraud allegations, essentially calling on the state to halt the legally required recounts in both the Senate and gubernatorial races.

“The Florida Election should be called in favor of Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis in that large numbers of new ballots showed up out of nowhere, and many ballots are missing or forged,” Trump said on Twitter, failing to provide any evidence for his claims of absent or fraudulent ballots. “An honest vote count is no longer possible-ballots massively infected. Must go with Election Night!”

Scott’s campaign refused to give any response to Trump’s latest call.

DeSantis, without directly rebuking Trump’s remarks, did not call on the recount to be halted. Privately, some some of his top supporters fretted that Scott and Trump are undermining faith in the very election system that Scott oversees and that DeSantis will likely control once the recount is done and he assumes office.

“These guys are going full crazy and there’s no need,” said one DeSantis insider. “It’s utterly unhelpful and pointless. We’re going to win. So why do this?”

In a written statement to POLITICO, DeSantis said he shares the “frustration” with the slow process of counting and recounting votes in Broward and Palm Beach counties and chided their election supervisors.

In Broward, regular post-election updates weren’t given by Supervisor Brenda Snipes, who was successfully sued by Scott for failing to provide public records concerning the ballots she had left to count. She also accepted 22 votes cast by absentee ballot that should not have been accepted because of a voter signature mismatch. In Palm Beach County, Supervisor Susan Bucher was successfully sued by Scott over duplicating about 650 damaged ballots outside of public view.

“The rule of law is foundational to our society and it must be followed. As governor, I will work diligently with our legislative leaders to make sure that all Floridians have continued confidence in our election system and that we address the potential deficiencies that have caused this situation in a few counties,” DeSantis said. “A crisis of faith in our election system should not be allowed to fester based on the actions of a few supervisors and I will work to right this situation for future elections.”

DeSantis’ measured tone is an extension of his comments made Saturday after the state’s 67 election supervisors submitted their first wave of unofficial results, triggering the recounts in his race, Scott’s contest and the battle for Florida agriculture commissioner.

In a video address, DeSantis — flanked by Florida and U.S. flags as he sat behind a desk — called the election results “clear and unambiguous” and reiterated that he won. However, he did not call for an end to the recount, took no shots at political opponents and spoke of the need for Floridians to unite.

“With the election behind us, it’s now time to come together as a state as we prepare to serve all Floridians,” DeSantis said. “Since Tuesday night, that is what I have been doing, and that is what I will continue to do in the days and weeks ahead as I prepare to take office as the 46th governor of the state of Florida.”

The concept, according to DeSantis' team, is to make the former congressman look above the fray — "a statesman."

In contrast, two days earlier, Scott’s campaign promoted a news conference at the Governor’s Mansion where he struck a strident, conspiratorial tone as he called on the Florida Department of Law Enforcement to investigate voting in South Florida and promised that he “will not sit idly by while unethical liberals try to steal this election from the people of Florida.”

“Every day since the election, the left-wing activists in Broward County have been coming up with more and more ballots out of nowhere,” Scott said. “We all know what is going on. Every person in Florida knows exactly what is happening. Their goal is to keep mysteriously finding more votes until the elections turn out the way they want.”

Scott, who faces an ethics complaint for using his official office to campaign, took no questions from reporters and later appeared on Fox’s conservative “Hannity” show, where the governor mentioned his call for an investigation and the lawsuits and accused “Democratic D.C. lawyers” of wanting to “steal this election.”

At about that time, 9:38 p.m., the Fox-watching president took to Twitter for the first time since the election to weigh in on the controversy: “Law Enforcement is looking into another big corruption scandal having to do with Election Fraud in #Broward and Palm Beach. Florida voted for Rick Scott!”

Scott’s allegations about “ballots out of nowhere” — the same words Trump used on Monday — is rooted in Broward County’s failure to regularly update the state voting system every 45 minutes with ballot tallies. As a result, tens of thousands of ballots in the Democrat-heavy county were dumped into the system all at once, causing the margins in the Senate and governor‘s races to narrow drastically.

But neither the Department of Law Enforcement nor the Division of Elections, which Scott controls, has found evidence that ballots were just conjured up from nothing. Scott went an extra step by filing an emergency motion seeking to have department or sheriff's deputies safeguard voting machines and ballots, but Broward Circuit Chief Judge Jack Tuter on Monday said there was no evidence of an emergency justifying the order because he saw no fraud.

“Ramp down the rhetoric,” the judge said.

Earlier in the day, Scott said on the show “Fox & Friends” that "Bill Nelson is clearly a sore loser.“

“He can't stand the fact that he's not going to be elected for what, the first time in decades,” Scott said. “He's just here to steal this election.”

Nelson’s campaign has, in turn, accused Scott of engaging in voter suppression. Nelson’s lawyer, Marc Elias, wrote on Twitter that Scott’s court motions are a “stunt” and said of Scott, “if he is confident he won,“ why is “he is so eager to stop all the lawful votes from being counted?”

Like Scott, Florida’s other top statewide elected Republican, Sen. Marco Rubio, had said Democrats wanted to “steal” the vote after Election Day. But since then, he has toned it down and shifted his focus by calling out the incompetence in Broward and Palm Beach counties. Through a spokeswoman, Rubio said Monday that the recounts should continue.

Rep. Ted Deutch, a Democrat who represents both counties, refused to criticize the local elections chiefs in an appearance earlier Monday on CNN. Instead, he singled out the Republicans for their baseless comments about voter theft and fraud.

“When Rick Scott and Donald Trump and Marco Rubio go out and start spinning these conspiracy theories about stealing elections and changing the outcome of elections, not only are they embarrassing themselves, they're undermining the public's faith in our democracy,” Deutch said. “They ought to know better. They need to stop it, and we need to let this recount go forward as required by state law.”

The only notable name Deutch omitted? DeSantis.