Rick Scott Keeps Battling Senate Leaders Because That’s the Only Way to Be Heard, He Says

“I'm expected to vote on what two people negotiate that I have no influence on,” the Florida Republican said of his frustration with Capitol Hill.

Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida speaking with attendees at the 2021 Student Action Summit hosted by Turning Point USA at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore from Surprise, Ariz., United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

WASHINGTON — First-term Sen. Rick Scott said he doesn’t mind failing to sway colleagues about specific policy prescriptions and can understand others holding opinions different than his own. 

What he can’t stand is being cut out of the conversation. 

“If you can't talk somebody into your ideas, you know, that's your problem. If you don't have a chance to talk somebody into your idea, that's their problem,” the Florida Republican told 24sight News of one of the things that motivated him to run for GOP leader next term. 

Scott failed to wrest control of the conference from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell after Republicans lost a seat in the 2022 midterms — a re-election effort which Scott quarterbacked as head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee — but is giving it another go this fall. This time the field includes Sens. Scott, John Cornyn of Texas, and Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota. 

All three candidates have criticized the 34 felony convictions against former president and presumptive 2024 nominee Donald Trump.

But Scott, a Trump ally and fan of the combative far-right House Freedom Caucus, has recently stepped up efforts to prove he’s the most conservative of the bunch. 

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The day after a New York jury found Trump guilty of interfering in the 2016 election, Scott joined a handful of GOP colleagues who pledged to tie the Senate in procedural knots as political payback for the “partisan lawfare” against the former president.