Evan McMorris-Santoro July 13, 2010, 8:53 AM

Since jumping into Florida’s Republican gubernatorial primary in April, millionaire hospital executive Rick Scott has spent a fortune beating the heck out of the Republican establishment’s choice, state Attorney General Bill McCollum. McCollum is now nearly out of money, and hoping Florida’s public financing laws will bail him out. Though the race is not over yet, Scott is looking more and more like a frontrunner — a development that could leave Republicans with an eccentric, disgraced CEO to carry their flag into the open race for governor in the fall.

The past two weeks in Florida have shown how far McCollum — once the shoo-in Republican nominee — has fallen in the face of the Scott’s more than $20 million onslaught. We entered July with the primary race having already descended to the level of America’s nastiest. McCollum was attempting to blunt Scott’s momentum by claiming Scott “profited from abortion” as the CEO of Columbia HCA. Scott came back with an ad slamming McCollum’s support from the “pro-abortion and pro-homosexual rights” Rudy Giuliani.

And then things got ugly.

Now Scott’s suing over Florida’s campaign finance law, in an attempt to really knock McCollum out of the race. In order to prevent, oh, people like Scott from massively outspending his opponent — exactly like he’s doing — Florida has a law in place that gives mere mortal candidates a dollar-for-dollar match of any money a self-funding millionaire candidate spends over $24.9 million. Scott has spent at least $21 million so far, and is arguing in federal court that the state giving McCollum money simply because Scott is spending it like it’s going out of style amounts to an attack on his right to free speech.

Scott has actually produced one of 2010’s great ironies with this argument. Though the establishment GOP’s choice, McCollum, is defending his right to public financing in the face of Scott’s lawsuit, the Republican-controlled legislature added a state constitutional amendment to the November ballot that would eliminate Florida’s public finance system.

Scott’s lawsuit forced McCollum to show how much damage Scott’s campaign has done to McCollum’s efforts. The unexpected months of advertising required to fight Scott has taken its toll on McCollum’s campaign, which reported in a court filing connected to the Scott suit that McCollum now has just $800,000 left in the bank.

Besides his money problems, McCollum is already dealing with plenty of trouble of his own making. First there’s the whole I-hired-George-Rekers thing, an embarrassing story that Democrats love. But then there’s also that small issue of the rapidly imploding state Republican party, which is turning in on itself as former chair — and McColllum ally — Jim Greer heads to trial on corruption charges.

So even without Scott’s millions beating him down everyday, McCollum would be facing a tough road this month. But the millions do exist as does Scott’s propensity to spend them early and often on primary advertisements. The mixture of McCollum’s, well, sorta lameness as a candidate and Scott’s Cadillac campaign has cleared the way for Scott to slide into the driver’s seat in this election.

Things really couldn’t be much worse for McCollum. And, frankly — especially considering that Scott is the public face of a nearly $2 billion-dollar fine for Medicare fraud back when he ran Columbia HCA — they couldn’t be much better for Scott. Not only is his campaign succeeding in the polls (which show him well ahead of McCollum), he’s also financially broken McCollum, or so it seems, leaving Scott with a lot of freedom to keep hitting McCollum with impunity.

It might be time for the state GOP establishment to start considering Scott a friend, rather than a foe. After all, he may be all they’ve got come November.

Bill McCollum, FL-GOV, Rick Scott