Meet the candidates: Rick Scott and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell compete for US Senate seat – WSVN 7News | Miami News, Weather, Sports

(WSVN) – A senatorial seat is up for grabs and running on the ballot is incumbent Republican Rick Scott against former state representative and Democrat Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

7News takes a closer look at both candidates.

Senator Rick Scott is running for re-election as Florida’s junior senator.

Before going to Washington, DC, he spent eight years in Tallahassee as a two-term governor.

The Republican’s campaign declined a one-on-one interview with 7News, but the candidate answered a few questions at an event with veterans.

First question: Why are there no debates?

“We just finished two hurricanes. We just finished Helene and Milton and we have a lot of people hurt in our state,” Scott said.

He talked about tackling climate change.

“What we have to do is do what I did as governor, we have to look at what we can do,” he said. “We’ve put a lot of money into sea level rise, beach renewal, Lake Okeechobee levee repair. I spent incredible amounts of money. We need to do the same at the federal level.”

Scott said he was voting no Amendment Fourwhich would limit government interference in abortion.

GovTrack The ideological score places Rick Scott as the most leaning member of the Senate.

His campaign ads show that he supports another serious issue, in vitro fertilization (IVF).

“Our youngest daughter is undergoing IVF treatments right now, hoping to expand her family,” Scott said. “She and I agree that IVF needs to be protected. For our family, for every family,” Scott said in the ad.

But Scott voted against the “IVF Bill of Rights,” which would have guaranteed federal protections for fertility treatments.

He said this about his opponent, former Democratic congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell.

“My opponent is a socialist,” he said. “He supports open borders, he wants to defund the police. She wants peace for Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua. She does not support the military. He had two years to say who he was and he would. She voted with AOC and Tlaib, Omar.”

“It’s really offensive that Rick Scott is attacking my family, my mother’s legacy; bringing me from a country where I grew up under a military dictatorship. And I was very strong against the communist dictatorships in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Nicaragua. But they do it because they have nothing else to attack,” Mucarsel-Powell said.

An ad campaign by Mucarsel-Powell highlights Scott’s past as a health care executive and the $1.7 billion Medicare fraud fined against his former company.

In the ad, Scott’s head was attached to the body of an invasive Florida species: a snake.

“He stole money from seniors in the largest Medicare fraud ever,” Powell is heard saying in the ad. “Then Scott went into the Senate, where he wrote the plan to end Social Security.”

Mucarsel-Powell said her campaign outspent and outspent her opponent.

“We know Rick Scott is one of the most vulnerable Republicans running for re-election right now, but what is he proposing to raise taxes and gut the Affordable Care Act?” she said. “Here in Florida, we have 4 million Floridians who receive health care through the ACA.”

If elected, among her priorities: addressing skyrocketing home insurance rates, passing the Voting Rights Act and codifying abortion rights.

“A woman should be able to make that decision on her own with her doctor, her family, her faith,” Mucarsel-Powell said.

These candidates will not face off in a debate, but both have records from their time in public office.