Rick Scott’s Popularity Plummets in Florida

Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s approval ratings are in free fall, according to a Quinnipiac poll released on Wednesday.  His 29% approval rating is the worst of any governor in the half-dozen states regularly surveyed by Quinnipiac.

Making matters worse, 37 percent of those in his own party disapprove of Scott’s job performance and only a bare majority of Republicans — 51 percent — approve of the job that he’s doing.

“Voters have turned even more negative on Gov. Rick Scott since the last Quinnipiac University survey,” said Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. “It probably doesn’t make him feel any better that the State Legislature is sharing the basement suite in the eyes of the electorate. The good news for the governor is that he has three and a half years to turn public opinion around.”

Scott, a wealthy health care executive before winning the governorship last November, has never enjoyed a particularly high approval rating in Florida. His favorability rating only hovered around 50 percent at the time of his election, a race in which he spent $70 million of his own fortune while narrowly defeating Democrat Alex Sink.

Scott, who recently convinced the Republican-controlled Florida House and Senate to provide $308 million in tax breaks, mostly in water management district property taxes, while making draconian budget cuts totaling nearly $4 billion — including slashing $1.35 billion to public education and more than $1 billion from the Medicaid health-care program for the poor and elderly — experienced a dramatic drop in his approval rating from the same poll in April.

He had a 35 percent approval rating at that time.

Scott’s dismal approval numbers come only two weeks after the newly-elected governor — now seen as toxic by a vast majority of voters in the Sunshine State, including more than a third in his own party — was the subject of some presidential speculation in Florida newspapers.

Scott, a darling of the Tea Party movement during his successful gubernatorial campaign, has consistently stated that he’s not interested in running for president in 2012.