WASHINGTON – Rick Scott was one of the first prominent Republican politicians in the nation to embrace Donald Trump's candidacy in 2016. The Florida governor raised money for the New York mogul, hosted an inaugural party after he won and frequented the White House last year to see his buddy.
Lately, the bromance has cooled a bit.
More than three months after kicking off his campaign to unseat three-term Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in a nationally watched race that could decide control of the Senate next year, Scott hasn't been seen with the president – even during visits to Washington.
The governor still talks regularly with the president, and he joined Trump during an official tour of a Tampa school Tuesday after they flew down together on Air Force One from Washington following a bill signing ceremony.
But the governor skipped the ensuing political rally Trump held Tuesday night in Tampa for U.S. Rep Ron DeSantis, who is vying for the GOP gubernatorial nomination.
And Scott is not shy these days about publicly disagreeing with the president at key junctures such as administration's policy on separating immigrant families at the border, arming teachers, or Trump's oft-stated doubts that Russia meddled in the last election.
He's also parted with Trump on certain policies, such as gun control (Scott signed a law raising the minimum age to buy guns from 18 to 21) and made it a point to welcome Puerto Ricans leaving the hurricane-ravaged island.
"I'm going to be with the president when it's good for Florida. I'm going to be against the president when it's not good for Florida," Scott told reporters earlier this month when pressed to respond to the president's denials about election interference at the Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Navigating the relationship with Trump
Scott is among a number of GOP candidates in competitive states around the country trying to navigate a relationship with a president who's enormously popular among the GOP base they need for victory but not warmly received by the independent voters who often decide elections.
In red states, such as Georgia, Indiana and Tennessee, the GOP primaries have turned into contests over how closely candidates can align themselves with the president's positions and personality traits.
“That's why we're seeing candidates run toward him in primaries,” said political analyst Nathan Gonzales, editor and publisher of the non-partisan Inside Elections.
In Florida, which Trump narrowly won over Hillary Clinton in 2016, the opposite is happening: the once chummy governor has created some space between the president and himself.
The president and the governor share an important narrative: both are wealthy businessmen who turned to politics late in life and won despite the opposition of the GOP establishment."
"Scott was Trump before there was Trump," said Brad Coker, managing director at Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy in Jacksonville.
Scott noted in a January 2016 column for USA TODAY that Trump "is capturing the frustration of many Americans after seven years of President Obama's very intentional government takeover of the U.S. economy." While not an overt endorsement, Scott's words gave the billionaire-turned-TV-celebrity a measure of political legitimacy.
And before Scott jumped in the race against Nelson, Trump often pushed his ally to run for the Senate including during a stop in Fort Myers last September to survey damage from Hurricane Irma. In January, his administration gave the governor an important victory: a pledge not to drill off the coast of Florida.
But asked in April whether Trump's shadow could be negative on his campaign run, Scott said he only worries about what he can control.
"I can't fix anything that's happening next door," he said. "The only thing I can do is what I do every day. And my belief is, if I work every day and I tell people what I'm going to do and give them a reason to vote for me, they will vote for me. The truth is today in Florida most people know who I am and they have a view on what I've done."
Tying Scott to Trump
Opponents eagerly try to tie the governor as closely to the president's most controversial decisions as they can:
Trump's support for ending an Obamacare provision barring insurance companies from turning away patients with pre-existing conditions, which would affect millions of Floridians. The administration's widely criticized response to Puerto Rico's devastation following Hurricane Maria last year. The president's trade war with China that could hurt Florida's orange growers.
Democrats have laid all of those controversies – and others – at Scott's feet even in those instances when the governor has tried to distance himself, such as the family separation issue.
Given the options, Democrats are better off tying Scott and Trump together rather than spending most of their resources pumping up Nelson, Coker said.
"I don't know that there's enough there to convince people that he's a senator we can't lose because of his seniority and influence," Coker said. "They need to make the case that Scott's going to be an automatic vote for Trump and (voting against Scott in November) is a way to strike back against Trump."
On Tuesday, hours before Trump took the stage for his political rally, Nelson tweeted that the governor can't escape the president's shadow.
"Rick Scott and Donald Trump stand united in wanting to take health care away from millions of Floridians – is this why Rick Scott doesn't want to stand on stage with Donald Trump tonight?," Nelson wrote on Twitter. "Rick Scott can try, but he can't hide from his pal Trump."
The president's rising approval ratings
Recent polls in Florida suggest that strategy carries risks as well.
A Gravis poll released July 15 and a CBS News/YouGov poll released in June both show a majority of Florida voters approve of Trump's job performance. The margin in both surveys is small but it's Trump's best showing since he took office nearly 17 months ago.
A Mason-Dixon poll released Tuesday showed slightly more Florida voters disapprove of Trump's performance (46 percent) than approve (43 percent).
Aubrey Jewett, a political science professor at Central Florida University, agrees with Coker that Democrats are better off painting Scott as a Trump clone as a way to "gin up the excitement and anger" among their voters.
But Nelson is in real trouble if the economy stays strong, if Trump manages to do one or two more popular things and avoids catastrophic controversy between now and November, and if a majority of voters continue to give the president a thumbs up, Jewett said.
Under those circumstances, "maybe the Republicans turn out and the blue wave isn't as big," he said.
Check and balance
Democrats disagree, citing what they believe is a deep undercurrent of opposition to the president and his policies that will especially hurt a governor who's so closely identified with Trump.
They contend Democratic victories over the past year in tough special elections in Florida (a GOP State Senate seat in Miami, a mayoral race in St. Petersburg and GOP State House seat in Sarasota) and around the nation portend grim news for Republican candidates in the 2018 cycle.
And they point to polls indicating generic voter preferences for candidates seen as a counterweight to the president's agenda.
A NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey in June showed that 48% of respondents are more likely to support a congressional candidate who "would promise to provide a check" on Trump compared to 23% who said they would be less likely to do so.
"What Scott's shown is whether it comes to the GOP's health care agenda or the president's handling of the crisis in Puerto Rico, he's too weak to call out Trump because he's worried about how it will impact his own political ambition," said David Bergstein, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Kerri Wyland, a spokeswoman for Scott said it's Nelson who's been the blind loyalist.
“While Governor Scott can put differences aside and work to actually accomplish many things for Floridians, Bill Nelson is just a partisan rubber stamp who refuses to reach across the aisle to help families," she said.
"His own brand"
GOP lobbyist and fundraiser Brian Ballard, who knows both Scott and Trump, said it would be "foolish" to not take advantage of a president who enjoys historically high approval ratings among Republicans and has a knack for connecting with working-class Democrats and independents.
Ballard believes they will campaign together at some point but also downplays the influence Trump will have on the race given the two-term governor "has his own brand" in a state that knows him well.
"What's driving the race is the competency of Rick Scott and his ability to get things done in Florida, his ability to get things done in Washington under the current administration, and what people project he'll be able to get done as a very dynamic United States senator," the lobbyist said.
But to win in November, Scott will have to win over a good percentage of Florida's independent voters, many of whom have yet to warm to Trump.
While 84 percent of Floridians who identify as conservative approve of Trump, only 40 percent of those who call themselves moderate approve of the president’s performance in office, according to the CBS News/YouGov poll from June.
Ballard said Scott will figure out how to navigate the relationship with a president who's been a net positive for those in his corner.
"You take the good with the bad," Ballard said. "But the good's been pretty dog-gone good."
WSBTV