WHAT THEY’RE SAYING: Rick Scott “In Serious Danger of Losing a Second Term”

Rick Scott’s disastrous record on Medicare, Social Security, and reproductive rights is in the spotlight as more polls show the race a dead heat.

Florida Politics: Florida pollster finds Donald Trump, Rick Scott with narrow leads in state

• Victory Insights, a Republican firm, found both Kamala Harris and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell have a chance to defy expectations.

• U.S. Sen. Rick Scott holds less than a 1-point edge on Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

• Scott, a Naples Republican, also seems in serious danger of losing a second term, the poll shows.

Palm Beach Post: Florida Senator Rick Scott's negative campaign shades the truth

• Where was Sen. Scott on the Inflation Reduction Act? He voted against it, including its provisions to reduce pharmaceutical costs.

• Where was he on the Affordable Care Act, through which millions of Floridians who didn't have health insurance now do, even if they have pre-existing medical conditions? Scott voted against it and sought to kill it.

• Where has Rick Scott been on the soaring property insurance and housing costs that have been plaguing his constituents? Last month he proposed a tax break for property insurance premiums. That promises a windfall to insurers, if unrestrained from raising premiums even higher.

• On election counts, he hews to partisan talking points, fear-mongering about fraud that doesn't exist.

• What we're looking for in a Senate candidate, especially one who aspires to a leadership post, is integrity. Instead we have a man who led a health care company that was fined $1.7 billion for cheating Medicare and Medicaid.

Washington Post: Jennifer Rubin: Keep your eye on the Florida Senate race

• First, Democrats have fielded a top-notch candidate in former congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, an immigrant from Ecuador who came to the United States with her mother and siblings as a teen.

• She noted that although some Hispanic voters have drifted to the Republicans, Democrats still win a majority of these voters. Her first ad was in Spanish, a recognition of the key role that Hispanics will play in the race.

• “My story is their story,” she said. “I know what it is to leave everything.” Mucarsel-Powell is the first Latina nominee of either party for Senate in the state.

• But just a day after our conversation, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee announced a multimillion-dollar investment in television advertising that includes Florida (as well as Texas), noting its intention to take advantage of Scott’s “damaged” standing.

• Abortion has galvanized Democrats, certainly, but it cuts across party, gender and age. Mucarsel-Powell related the story of a 70-year-old man who told her that his No. 1 issue is abortion. “His aunt died pre-Roe, devastating the whole family.” Mucarsel-Powell has hit Scott as an advocate for the most extreme antiabortion sect, voting against IVF and against contraception protection.

• Instead, she argued, Scott has a record of taking large donations from insurance companies, enacting anti-environmental policies (earning him the moniker “Red Tide Rick” when ecological disaster struck) and voting against climate change legislation.

• It’s no wonder Scott is deeply unpopular (garnering just 35 percent approval in an August poll) and so far has declined to debate Mucarsel-Powell. (She has agreed to three TV debates.)

• Scott has good reason to fear going up against an aggressive opponent who was quick to remind me that Scott was forced to pay $1.7 billion to settle a Medicaid insurance fraud case from his time as head of Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corp.