Former Florida Congresswoman Jumps Into Senate Race Against Rick Scott

Former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell announced a Senate campaign against Republican Sen. Rick Scott on Tuesday, becoming the best-known Democratic candidate to challenge the incumbent Republican in a state that has shifted to the right in recent years. 

Top Democrats are hopeful that Mucarsel-Powell, who served one term in Congress before she lost her bid for reelection in 2020, could make the race against Scott more interesting. Still, top operatives see the race as nothing more than a long shot in the party’s bid to hold onto the Senate in 2024.

“Rick Scott is a fraud, and in Florida we know it,” Mucarsel-Powell said in a statement. “It will take all of us working together to defeat him, but that’s when we’re at our best; and everywhere I go I can feel this desire for change.”

Mucarsel-Powell was born in Ecuador and came to the United States when she was 14. She became the first South American-born immigrant to be elected to Congress when she successfully ousted Republican Rep. Carlos Curbelo in the Democratic wave of 2018. She represented the South Florida district – which extended from the Miami suburbs to Key West – for two years before she lost her seat to former Miami-Dade County Mayor Carlos A. Giménez in 2020. 

Her loss, which she partly attributed to widespread misinformation “everywhere” in the district’s Latino communities, signaled a shift for Democrats in South Florida, once the party’s bastion in the state, and once against highlighted how Florida had moved away from the party.

Mucarsel-Powell is not the only Democrat in the race, but her entrance does make her the primary's frontrunner. Phil Ehr – a Democrat who unsuccessfully challenged Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz in 2020 – and former Florida Rep. Alan Grayson have also announced campaigns.

Some Democrats in Florida have recently pushed Mucarsel-Powell to enter the race in Florida. Those calls only increased after a recent poll by Global Strategy Group showed the Democrat within the margin of error against Scott. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the Democratic National Senatorial Committee are also said to have urged the former congresswoman to run.

“Rick Scott is highly vulnerable,” said an aide for the Democratic Senate committee. “Debbie Mucarsel-Powell would be a strong candidate to defeat him.”

Scott's campaign labeled Mucarsel-Powell a "failed congressional candidate" in response to her announcement.

“Former Congresswoman Mucarsel-Powell is a radical socialist who voted 100% of the time with Nancy Pelosi during her short tenure in Congress, which is why the voters of South Florida booted her out of office the first chance they got," said Priscilla Ivasco, a Scott campaign spokesperson. "Floridians already rejected her once and they will reject her again.” 

A video announcing Mucarsel-Powell’s candidacy makes clear that her strategy will be to tear down the incumbent Republican, tying him to bills aimed at restricting the right to an abortion in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, as well as his own plan to raise taxes on lower-earning Americans and remake how entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare are administered. Mucarsel-Powell also invokes the $1.7 billion fine Columbia/HCA Hospital, Scott's former company, had to pay over Medicare fraud.

“Ya no mas,” Mucarsel-Powell says in the video, a phrase that translates to “no more.”

The video also highlights the tightrope the former congressman will have to walk, as polls show Florida voters have soured on President Joe Biden’s leadership, especially on the economy. Mucarsel-Powell blames Scott for increasing prices, saying “our costs for prescriptions, health insurance, and homeowners insurance have all gone up,” but polls show many Florida voters blame the Democratic president, too.

Scott, the former governor of Florida and a one-time healthcare executive, has self-funded much of his political career. In 2018, a year that was otherwise good for Democrats, Scott defeated incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson, spending over $60 million of his own fortune on the race.

The Republican announced in January that he would seek reelection in January, pledging to run on what had become his controversial “Rescue America” plan. That proposal earned bipartisan condemnation when he announced it in 2022 because it would raise how much poorer Americans would pay in federal taxes.

“I ran to fight for Floridians and that is exactly what I am going to keep doing. I’ve never lost a race and I don’t intend to now,” Scott tweeted after announcing his plans.

While it is true that Scott has never lost a race, he has only ever won by around one percentage point, notably slim margins that have given Democrats hope.

Republicans have a favorable map in 2024. While Democrats are defending 23 seats, Republicans are only looking to hold 11. Of those Republican seats, only two are marginally competitive: Scott’s contest and Sen. Ted Cruz’s bid for reelection in Texas. Democrats, by comparison, have incumbents in three red states – West Virginia, Ohio, and Montana – and competitive races in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Arizona.

Mucarsel-Powell notes in her announcement video that she lost her father to gun violence – he was shot and killed outside his home in Ecuador while the future congresswoman was living in the United States. In part because of the indictment, Mucarsel-Powell was one of the most outspoken members of congress on the issue.

“I lost my own father to gun violence,” she says in her announcement video. “That’s why l fight every day to keep our children and our communities safe. And I’m not afraid to take on Rick Scott or anyone that doesn’t put Florida first.”