Scott ramps up spending to $3 million in Florida Senate race

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) is quickly ramping up his campaign in the state’s high-profile Senate race, spending a total of $3 million on TV ads.

A week after he formally announced he’s challenging Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Scott launched his first TV and digital ad of the campaign on Tuesday, with an initial ad buy of $2 million.

The ad calls for instituting term limits in Congress, which was a major focus in his announcement speech. During that speech, the two-term governor said he wants term limits to “stop career politicians.”

“In Washington, they say term limits can’t be done. That’s nonsense,” Scott says in the ad. “We don’t work for them — they work for us.”

{mosads}On Thursday, Scott released his second ad, a Spanish-language TV spot that focuses on Florida’s job growth and tax cuts. The ad buy is $1 million and will run in the Tampa, Orlando and Miami media markets.

Since announcing, Scott has kept up a busy campaign schedule and has attended fundraisers in Washington. But while Scott has focused on fundraising early in the race, both Republicans and Democrats in the state expect the deep-pocketed governor to self-fund, as he did in his two gubernatorial campaigns.

Looking to keep pace with Scott, Nelson had one of his strongest fundraising quarters, raising $3.2 million in the first three months of the year. He has $10.5 million in the bank.

Florida will be one of the most closely watched Senate races of the cycle. Nelson is one of 10 Senate Democrats up for reelection in a state that President Trump carried in 2016.

But Trump won the state by just a little over a point. And his unpopularity in the state could be a drag on Scott, a close ally of the president.