Rick Scott has the worst approval rating of any governor in the country and seems desperate to pull it up. Only one out of every four Florida voters thinks he’s doing an adequate job.A Public Policy Polling survey says former Gov. Charlie Crist would defeat Scott by 55-32 if he ran against him as a Democrat. Florida Democrats are already considering recruiting Crist to be their 2014 gubernatorial nominee.
Scott knows he's in big trouble and has begun pulling out some smoke and mirrors to try and save his political career. Floridians saw some of this last week when Scott said he didn't want any more cuts to public education and asked for $1 billion more in school spending. But public schools took a $1.3 billion gutting from the budget Scott signed last year. And a big chunk of that new money comes from cuts to the Medicaid program that the state’s poorest children depend on.
The governor is now taking another step to improve his worst-in-the-nation poll numbers by jumping into the headlines of FAMU’s public crisis. He says the Board of Trustees should put FAMU President James H. Ammons on administrative leave until “investigations at the university are completed.”
Scott told reporters that he has "not seen anything to suggest that he’s done the wrong thing." He also admitted that no one told him that Ammons is being uncooperative.
The governor is looking more and more like Donald Trump and the other “carnival-barkers” who will do anything for attention.
FAMU's trustees already rejected a motion to suspend Ammons last week. The board needs to stand its ground and let Scott go play his political games somewhere else.
Maybe Scott thinks he and Ammons are alike. Scott resigned as Chairman and CEO of Columbia/HCA in 1997 when the feds started an investigation into Medicare and Medicare fraud at his company. He pled the 5th Amendment 75 times during a deposition on the case. His former company ended up pleading guilty to more than a dozen felonies and paid $1.7 billion in fines, which set a new record.
Ammons should not feel obliged to leave FAMU like Scott left Columbia/HCA. There isn't any reason for him to resign or be placed on suspension when no one has proven that he has done anything wrong.
Most Florida voters do not think Scott is up to the task of running the state. He definitely is not the person who should be trying to run FAMU.