Rick Scott — the extremely wealthy frontrunner in Florida’s Republican gubernatorial primary — scored a major victory today, when a federal appeals court ruled that his primary opponent, state Attorney General Bill McCollum, can’t get a dollar-for-dollar match from the state when Scott exceeds Florida’s campaign spending cap.
State law allows McCollum to get a match from the state for every dollar Scott spends over $24.9 million. Scott had argued that the law significantly chilled his First Amendment rights by forcing him to slow his spending. A lower court had rejected Scott’s attempt to block the public financing law, but today a federal appeals court overturned the earlier ruling.
According to the Pensacola News Journal:
That means McCollum, who has already received $1.2 million in state matching money for contributions he has raised in running for governor, can’t get a dollar from the state for every dollar Scott spends above $24.9 million. The multi-millionaire Naples hospital executive was near that point when his campaign challenged the law.
That’s big news for Scott — who’s burying McCollum in an avalanche of negative ads in what has quickly become one of the country’s nastiest primaries. In court documents related to this case, the McCollum campaign acknowledged earlier this month that it had just $800,000 left in the bank.
The TPM Poll Average for the August 24 primary shows Scott leading McCollum 41.2-31.4.
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