Rick Scott, the former health care executive who won Tuesday’s primary to become the Republican nominee for governor of Florida, could be inching his way to the center after running his right-wing insurgent campaign: He does not support amending the Constitution or otherwise working to get rid of birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants.
Scott, who made his support for Arizona’s crackdown on illegal immigration a strong point of his ads, was asked about birthright citizenship in an interview last night with John King on CNN.
“I don’t believe we ought to be changing the law. I think we ought to leave the law exactly the way it is, the 14th Amendment,” said Scott. When asked again by King for confirmation, Scott made it clear that he believes in birthright citizenship for all: “That is a right. If you’re born in our country, you’re a citizen of our country.”
The key moment about birthright citizenship comes at the 5:35 mark.
Also during the interview, Scott addressed the potential dirty laundry that could be used against him in the general election: His company paid a record fine of $1.7 billion for Medicare fraud. Scott spun this as a plus — that unlike career politicians, he’s built up a business and taken responsibility for things that went wrong.
“Well, that’s what my opponent said in the primary — and he lost. I mean everybody knows, we’ve built, and I built a number of wonderful companies. That company in particular, you know, I took my life savings of $125,000, and in nine years we built the largest health care provider in the world. Our patient satisfaction were way higher than the national average.”
King interrupted and pressed him further, pointing out that the fine for Scott’s company was a record amount.
“And what I tell people is, you know, when you’re in business, anything that goes wrong, you should take responsibility if you’re the CEO. I do. The difference is, let’s think about where we are in the state. We have the highest unemployment on record. We have almost 50 percent of our homeowners underwater on their mortgages. We have — we’re walking into a five-plus billion dollar deficit. Has any politician in the state taken any responsibility for putting us in this position? No. What I tell people all the time is, I’m a businessperson. I know that, you know, you put up your money, you try to build your companies, and you take responsibility for what goes wrong. I do. When I’m governor, I hope nothing goes wrong. But if it does, you know I’ll show up, I’ll take responsibility, and I’ll fix it.”
The TPM Poll Average shows Democrat Alex Sink leading Scott by 38.8%-30.5%, plus 11.0% for independent Bud Chiles.
