Democrats Look To Tie Trump To Scott
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PHILADELPHIA (CBSMiami/NSF) – In recent days, Gov. Rick Scott has taken to comparing his upstart bid for the governor's office to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's attempt to win Florida's 29 electoral votes.
Turns out, Democrats couldn't agree more.
At a final breakfast shared Thursday by Florida's delegates to the Democratic National Convention, some speakers tried to lash Trump to Scott and warn that the presidential candidate would pursue similar policies to the governor if elected to the White House.
"Make no mistake, Rick Scott and Donald Trump are cut from the same wing of the Republican Party: Not the conservative wing, but the con-man wing," North Florida Democratic Congresswoman Gwen Graham said.
Graham had her own reasons for using the speech to fire on Scott as well as Trump; the congresswoman is considering a bid for governor in 2018. She used her remarks to delegates to attack both men's records on the minimum wage, health care and the environment.
"We're the third-largest state in the nation. It's time for us to start acting like it," Graham said.
She was hardly alone during Thursday's breakfast, as speakers took one last shot at exciting the delegation before it heads back to Florida for the general election.
Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, who ran for president in 2004 and later became chairman of the Democratic National Committee, highlighted the news that Scott will serve as national chairman of Rebuilding America Now, a super PAC backing Trump.
"That's about right," Dean said. "Donald Trump is a Neanderthal nincompoop, and so is Rick Scott. They're perfectly well-matched. Donald Trump is a guy who's made a lot of money at everybody else's expenses and so is Rick Scott."
It's not the first time Democrats have tried to use Scott, who won both of his races for governor in midterm elections, to motivate presidential electorates that tend to be more liberal. In 2012, the party occasionally tried to tie GOP nominee Mitt Romney to Scott; Romney narrowly lost Florida to President Barack Obama that November.
For Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, winning the state again in 2016 could serve as a knockout punch to Trump. Obama did not need Florida to clinch re-election four years ago; on the other hand, it is incredibly difficult for the GOP to win the White House without it.
"The pressure in some ways is maybe unfair, but the reality is it's going to be all up to you in very, very substantial ways," former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told the delegates. "We win in Florida and I can almost guarantee that Hillary Clinton is going to be the next president of the United States. If we don't win in Florida, then things become a lot more problematic."
Democrats suggested they don't just want to win the state. They want to run up the score.
"We can't simply beat Donald Trump," California Congressman Mark Takano said. "We must defeat him so thoroughly and so overwhelmingly that no politician ever seeks to run on this type of campaign again."
The News Service of Florida's Brandon Larrabee contributed to this report.