Rick Scott - The Tea Party Governor - Part 2

This is the second in a series of blog posts on why I believe Rick Scott will be the "Tea Party Governor."

As I mentioned in part one of this series of blog posts, when I first learned that Rick Scott was entering the Florida gubernatorial primary against Bill McCollum, I thought it was odd. Since I knew Scott was also an outspoken opponent of Obamacare, I couldn’t understand how Scott could feel he could do any better on the health care issue than McCollum.

But eventually I got it. And once I did, I realized that Rick Scott “gets it.” He gets it more than I could have imagined. In fact, I’m a bit embarrassed that he got it a lot earlier than I did.

And this proves once again why Rick Scott is a tea party patriot. Some have called him out as a fraud. Let me tell you that he is the real thing. Like most tea party patriots, he has been willing to invest his own time, his own money, and his own reputation to do what he feels is best for his country.

There is nothing for Rick Scott to profit by winning the Governor's mansion. In fact, he has said he won't even draw a salary as Governor. He has spent tens of millions of dollars of his own money to obtain a position he won't even take money for. If this isn't one of the highest forms of charity towards his fellow Floridians, I don't know what is. As a tea party patriot, he is restoring the true idea of public service.

And he got in the race against McCollum primarily because of a core principle of the tea party movement. Since its inception almost two years ago, the tea party movement has not only been about lower taxes and less government spending, it has primarily been about changing the culture of politics. It has been about returning the power from the establishment career politicians, like Bill McCollum, to we the people. It has been about getting reckless government spending under control and restoring confidence and trust in the very idea of self-government.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a fan of Bill McCollum. I had planned to vote for him. He was even once on my board of directors at The James Madison Institute. I believe McCollum would have had the conservative answer on almost every piece of legislation that came to his desk.

But let’s face it. McCollum has been in office for the better part of his life. In 1980, at the age of 36, McCollum was first elected to Congress, where he served for 20 years. In 2000, he launched an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. Senate. He tried again in 2004 and lost a close primary to Mel Martinez, who went on to win the seat. In 2006, he was elected to be Florida’s Attorney General. Over the last 30 years, McCollum has spent 24 of those years in elected office. Like him or not, he certainly fits the mold of a career politician.

And this is exactly the strategy Scott took to defeat McCollum: Scott got behind the tea party crowd and rallied against the incumbent. 2010 has certainly not been a year that has looked favorably upon incumbents - even (and perhaps especially) incumbents in the Republican Party.

It’s not that McCollum wasn’t conservative enough or that he was a corrupt politician. As I mentioned, I think his record demonstrates the opposite. It’s about the fact that the average voter is “mad as hell” that our elected officials have “lost touch” with reality. When you serve most of your life in political office, there are just many things you can’t relate to as well in regards to how most of us live our lives. In a tough economy with high unemployment and out-of-control government spending, the anger against incumbents mounts even higher - especially when most in government are immune to unemployment (well, until they get thrown out of office).

And all across the country, the incumbents in the Republican Party have fought back - sometimes in nasty ways. McCollum’s strategy should have been to stick with the fact that Scott is a “rookie” (he’s never held political office). Or that he, McCollum, would be the more viable candidate against liberal Alex Sink. Instead, his campaign strategy tried to smear Scott’s personal reputation. When voters saw this, they marched even harder for Scott. And with his own reputation on the line, Scott fought back with his own attack ads against McCollum and ultimately won.

Another trend has since emerged - the incumbent Republicans who are defeated by a Republican outsider - have become “sore losers.” So far, almost a month after the primary, McCollum has not endorsed Scott. This is pretty rare. If Scott (or any “tea party” candidate) loses to an establishment candidate, and doesn’t endorse them, they are called out on it. Yet the entire Republican establishment has let McCollum get away with being a sore loser.

Speaking of the Republican establishment - not one single Republican member of the Florida Legislature endorsed Scott publicly during the primary. I know that as Scott was taking a lead in the polls, a few were privately supporting him. But not publicly. Both the outgoing and incoming Speaker of the House and the outgoing and incoming Senate President (all Republicans) endorsed McCollum in the primary. A few of them even raised millions of dollars for McCollum.

While Scott outspent McCollum, it wasn’t by as much as some have claimed. McCollum not only had the backing of the Republican establishment, but also of all the special interest groups in Tallahassee. Through my job at JMI, I meet many representatives of many of these special interest groups, and all were in the tank for McCollum. In fact, there were a few moments that I saw a paranoid establishment seeking to make sure everyone was on board. That’s the moment I made my final decision to vote for Rick Scott in the Republican primary. A self-financed millionaire: this is what it takes to beat the establishment - and barely.

The tea party has primarily been against reckless and irresponsible spending, but it has also been against elected officials - and the entire establishment apparatus - who arrogantly believe they know what is best for the rest of us.

Rick Scott took on the establishment in his own party and won. The best historical figures in the Republican Party’s past had to do the same thing. That actor from Hollywood never held political office before he became Governor of the largest state in the Union. He would eventually become known to all of us as President Ronald Reagan.

Scott still has a way to go before he gets christened as the next Ronald Reagan. But the tea party isn’t interested in that. What we are interested in doing is what’s right. We like success stories when we see them. We like to see people who have earned their way in pursuing the American Dream. And we like to reward them. And we hope once they get in office, they'll put together solutions that seem like common sense to us.

We don’t think that a political office is for the person who’s next in line. Rick Scott certainly wasn’t on anyone’s radar as the next in line to be Florida’s Governor. That actor from Hollywood could never be Governor, much less President. But history has a way of proving all of us wrong.

Rick Scott: The Tea Party Governor - Part 1

This is the first in a series of blog posts on why I believe Rick Scott will be the "Tea Party Governor."

Since its inception almost two years ago, the tea party movement has not only been about lower taxes and less government spending, it has primarily been about changing the culture of politics. It has been about returning the power from the establishment career politicians to we the people. It has been about getting reckless government spending under control and restoring confidence and trust in the very idea of self-government.

I was the primary organizer of the tea party movement in Tallahassee. As an employee of The James Madison Institute (JMI), I spend my days (and many nights) gathering support for JMI so that we can further public policy solutions for Florida that do not depend on government or “other people’s money.” Organizations like JMI exist to educate citizens (and policy makers) about the timeless principles that are needed for liberty to continue to exist and be available for all.

While JMI has been furthering these ideas since 1987, it was the tea party movement that brought the very principles of the Constitution back into the public square in 2009. Apart from my day job at JMI, I spent much of my personal time early in 2009 organizing two tea parties in Tallahassee. In March 2009, we had about 225 people attend, with our guest speaker, Dick Armey of FreedomWorks. That was only a warm-up act for April 15. We had more than 2,000 people come to the grounds of Florida’s state capitol for a “Rally Against Generational Debt.” There were more than 50 such rallies in Florida that day and approximately 1,000 around the country.

As our keynote speaker and local radio host Preston Scott said that day, the tea party isn’t against taxes, per se. We’re willing to pay our fair share. What we are against is the reckless and irresponsible spending by elected officials who arrogantly believe they know what is best for the rest of us.

As the tea party movement grew, the phones began ringing off the hook at JMI and other like-minded organizations. The tea party movement, for the most part, is filled with citizens who were becoming politically active for the first time in their lives. In any case, most in the tea party movement had never been THIS involved in taking action, coming to rallies, calling their elected officials, and even joining Facebook to stay in the loop. These newly active citizens were contacting organizations like JMI, looking for speakers and trying to find out how they could educate their groups and, in some sense, provide entertainment and engaging speakers at their rallies.

As the Director of Development at JMI, I accepted an invitation to speak at a tea party held in Fort Walton Beach, Florida on September 12, 2009. This was the same exact day that tea partiers across the nation were descending on Washington - reports estimate anywhere between 500,000 and one million people attended the rally in our nation’s capital that day.

Meanwhile hundreds of other rallies were taking place in locations across the country - for those who could not spare the time or expense to go to DC. At the rally I spoke at, there were several other speakers addressing the 400 plus crowd of people who came out despite the rain. Luckily, the event was able to be moved under a covered pavilion. One such speaker that spoke just before me was Rick Scott.

Yes, he’s now the Republican candidate for Governor. But I did not detect any political aspirations in him then. He came to speak representing an organization called “Conservatives for Patients Rights.” He spoke eloquently and from the heart. In between speeches, I was able to talk to him for a few minutes. I really liked him. I had read about him a few months earlier when I learned about what his group was doing to fight Obamacare.

I had learned he had already spent millions of dollars from his personal fortune to fight Obamacare and that he was willing to spend up to $20 million to do so. As I spoke with him casually that day, we discussed the hard fight against Obamacare ahead. I think I was most taken aback by the soft tone of his speech. He did not appear to me like a multi-million dollar CEO. In fact, he seemed like a very humble guy - and like “one of us," he clearly articulated an understanding of the threat big government programs, like Obamacare, posed to families, small businesses, and even large health care corporations like the ones he has run.

The Rick Scott name faded into my memory over the next six months or so. That was until the health care bill passed. During that battle, the Obama White House had named Rick Scott public enemy number one. They did not want any prominent people in the health care industry pointing out the fatal flaws in their health care bill.

A few weeks after the bill passed, I learned that Rick Scott was entering the race to become the next Governor of Florida. At first I thought this was odd. I knew his big issue was health care and with Attorney General Bill McCollum suing the federal government on behalf of Floridians, I couldn’t understand how Scott could feel he could do any better on the health care issue than his primary opponent, Bill McCollum.

But eventually I got it. And once I did, I realized that Rick Scott “gets it.” He gets it more than I could have imagined. In fact, I’m a bit embarrassed that he got it a lot earlier than I did. In fact, Rick Scott is a tea party patriot. Some have called him out as a fraud. Let me tell you that he is the real thing. Like most tea party patriots, he has been willing to invest his own time, his own money, and his own reputation to do what he feels is best for his country. There is nothing for him to profit by winning the Governor's mansion. In fact, he has said he won't even draw a salary as Governor. He has spent tens of millions of dollars of his own money to obtain a position he won't even take money for. If this isn't one of the highest forms of charity towards his fellow Floridians, I don't know what is. As a tea party patriot, he is restoring the true idea of public service.

Our family vacation in New York City!

This past Labor Day weekend, I met my parents and two brothers in New York City for a family vacation there. Our main purpose for choosing this city on this particular weekend was to hit up the U.S. Open, take in a game at the new Yankee Stadium, and attend a Broadway show - The Jersey Boys.

We all arrived via Jet Blue airline on Thursday, Sept 2. My brother Tony flew in from Orlando and my parents and brother Manny flew in from West Palm Beach. I arrived about two hours behind them, flying in from Jacksonville. I really enjoyed flying Jet Blue (this was my first time doing so). I loved the little televisions they have at every seat, with 36 different channels via DirectTV. I watched a lot of the US Open on the way up and back.

After arriving into JFK airport, I took a cab ride over to Manhattan to meet my parents and brothers at our midtown hotel, the Wingate Wyndham, located on 35th street, between 7th and 8th avenues. A perfect location, a block from Penn Station, about 7 blocks from Times Square, where they had been walking around before I arrived.

Once I got to the hotel, we then got on the subway and headed downtown. Our first stop was Battery Park, where we looked across the water to see the Statue of Liberty. We then walked over to the Skyscraper Museum. Admission was $5, but it really wasn’t worth it. We then walked another 5 blocks or so to Ground Zero. There’s been some progress there (much more than the last time I visited the site in September 2002). There were also some memorials, especially a few dedicated to the firefighters who lost their lives to save other’s lives. A sacred ground indeed.

From there, we walked a few blocks over to Wall Street, where we walked by the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall, the site of our nation’s first capitol and where our first President, George Washington, took his first oath of office. It’s the heart of our nation’s political and financial history.

Well, it was finally time for dinner. And let’s just say that was a challenge as we didn’t have a real plan in mind, but I was planning to meet up with a few friends in the East Village area after dinner, so we didn’t want to go back to midtown just yet. We eventually made our way to small cafe style restaurant called Jerry’s Cafe. It wasn’t bad. After dinner, they headed back to the hotel and I went and joined my friends for a few drinks at Pete’s Tavern, which is the oldest continuous restaurant and bar in the city (so they claim). They’ve been there since 1864 and I tried their Pete’s 1864 Ale. Not bad either. It was a nice warm evening.

A few of my friends and I stayed out a bit later and hit up a few more establishments a block away from Pete’s. One was the Black Bear Lodge (I no longer felt like I was in NYC - it was a small bar that looked like a ski lodge on the inside - “are we in Montana?,” I thought.) Then we went down the street to another bar that has a live cover band. From there, we took a cab closer to midtown to a southern-feeling establishment, Brother Jimmy’s. It was a lot of fun. Luckily my friend James was able to give me a ride back to my hotel. It was nearly 2am! Where did the time go?

The next morning, we were hoping and praying that it would not rain. Hurricane Earl was skirting the east coast and the day before the weather report said there was a 90% chance of rain. But for how long? Luckily - not long!

We spent all day at the US Open over in Flushing Meadows. We started the day watching Tommy Robredo out on Court 11. Then, we watched 18-year old American Ryan Harrison. He had beaten the #15 seed Ljubic. In this match he took on Stakhovskey. It was a 4 hour plus match out on the Grandstand, with one 30-minute rain delay. It was the match of the day. Not a seat left in the Grandstand (the third biggest court). Harrison lost the match 8-6 in the 5th set tiebreaker, after being up 6-3 in the breaker with 3 match points. It was disappointing for the fans, but hey, this kid is 18 years old! Not a bad showing, after having to qualify for the U.S. Open. I think he’ll be back.

Later, we watched John Isner close out his second round match and my parents and brothers circulated the grounds to see a few other matches. I missed seeing Andy Murray’s match (he was off the court fast). Luckily his match wasn’t enough for him - as just 15 minutes after he was done, I caught him practicing out on the practice courts. Pretty neat to see him in action out there, so close up. We had a great day at the US Open.

We headed back to our hotel in Manhattan and then headed down to Times Square, where we ate dinner at the Hard Rock. A great meal and high quality family time. We all walked back to the hotel and then my brother Tony and I headed out and found a good comedy club at the Times Square Art Center, where about 8 comedians performed for about two hours total. In total we spent $40 - that included admission and two drinks, but all our tax and tip. Not a bad night out.

On Saturday, we all headed to the Bronx to take in a game at the new $1.2 billion Yankee Stadium. We witnessed the Yankees beat the Toronto Blue Jays 7-5 to extend their winning streak to 8 games - highest of the season. And they ended up losing their game on Sunday, so we saw the final game of their longest win streak of the season. In the stadium, we took in some great food (NY pizza for me!), saw a Yankees museum, and just were in awe over all the amenities this stadium had to offer, including a giant high definition tv screen in the outfield.

After the game, we went back into Manhattan via the subway (same way we got to the Bronx). We then ate dinner at a good Italian restaurant in a more residential area a few blocks away. Then later, Tony and I went back down to the East Village/Union Square area and hit up a few bars. But we didn’t stay out terribly late - just enough to get a bit more of a feel of the town.

On Sunday morning, I went to mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral with my mom and two brothers. It was a beautiful mass - and as large as that place is - it was PACKED with fellow Catholics. After mass we toured the cathedral, walked around Rockefeller Center, visited the NBC Store (where I marveled at merchandise from shows like Seinfeld and The Office). We then walked by Radio City Music Hall, the NYC hq of Fox News, and strolled right into a Brazilian festival and flea market that took up many city blocks, where they had the street closed. After grabbing some lunch and heading back to the hotel, we then rested up and headed out the door again.

We were on our way to the historic August Wilson Theatre, where we caught a 3pm viewing of the play “Jersey Boys.” This was my first ever show on Broadway - and it was absolutely FANTASTIC! After the show, we grabbed dinner across the street at Victor’s Cafe, a Cuban restaurant that has been there for more than 47 years. After dinner, we walked about 17 blocks back to the hotel - but after that fantastic dinner, we needed the walk and we strolled back through Times Square and in and out of a number of shops and just took in the sites on a beautiful evening, which felt like fall as the temperatures dipped into the lower 60s.

After resting up for an hour or so at our hotel, my brothers and I headed out on the town. Thanks to some tips from some friends, we ended up at the Gin Mill, where the drinks were $3 from 8pm til close. Finally! A reasonable drink in NYC. We were in the Upper West Side, near 81st and Amsterdam and not terribly far from Columbia University, so definitely a mix of young professionals and college kids. We then ended up at Sutton Place, a rooftop bar on the Upper East Side and made it back to our hotel late - about 3am. We were just having too much fun. A great night on the town for three brothers - lots family bonding this weekend!

On Monday, after waking up (which felt like too early after that late night!) I gave my parents and brothers our last few hugs and headed out the door. My flight was a good 5 hours ahead of theirs - so I left the hotel about 11:30am and took the cab back to JFK for my 2:35pm flight. They headed out to see a final attraction or two in the city before they headed back to the airport as well. What a great weekend with the family in the Big Apple! We really had the ideal New York City experience - and we did so much, all in a matter of about 4 days. As Frank Sinatra sang, “I want to be a part of it, New York, New York.” We surely were!