{"id":73649,"date":"2025-12-06T16:18:11","date_gmt":"2025-12-06T16:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/73649\/"},"modified":"2025-12-06T16:18:11","modified_gmt":"2025-12-06T16:18:11","slug":"hope-florida-fallout-drives-another-rick-scott-rebuke-of-ron-desantis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/73649\/","title":{"rendered":"Hope Florida fallout drives another Rick Scott rebuke of Ron DeSantis"},"content":{"rendered":"

The cold war between Florida\u2019s Governor and his predecessor is nearly seven years old and tensions show no signs of thawing.<\/p>\n

On Friday, Sen. Rick Scott<\/a> weighed in on Florida Politics\u2019<\/a> reporting on the Agency for Health Care Administration\u2019s<\/a> apparent repayment of $10 million of Medicaid money from a settlement last year, which allegedly had been diverted to the Hope Florida Foundation<\/a>, summarily filtered through non-profits through political committees, and spent on political purposes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI appreciate the efforts by the Florida legislature to hold Hope Florida accountable. Millions in tax dollars for poor kids have no business funding political ads. If any money was misspent, then it should be paid back by the entities responsible, not the taxpayers,\u201d Scott posted to X.<\/p>\n

While AHCA Deputy Chief of Staff\u00a0Mallory McManus\u00a0says that is an \u201cincorrect\u201d interpretation, she did not respond to a follow-up question asking for further detail this week.<\/p>\n

The $10 million under scrutiny was part of a $67 million settlement from state Medicaid contractor\u00a0Centene, which DeSantis said was\u00a0\u201ca cherry on top\u201d in the settlement, arguing it wasn\u2019t truly from Medicaid money.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But in terms of the Scott-DeSantis contretemps, it\u2019s the latest example of tensions that seemed to start even before DeSantis was sworn in when Scott left the inauguration<\/a> of his successor, and which continue in the race to succeed DeSantis, with Scott enthusiastic about current front runner Byron Donalds<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Scott criticized DeSantis\u2019 call to repeal so-called vaccine mandates<\/a>\u00a0for school kids, saying parents could already opt out according to state law.<\/p>\n

While running for re-election to the Senate in 2024, Scott critiqued the Heartbeat Protection Act,<\/a> a law signed by DeSantis that banned abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy with some exceptions, saying the 15 week ban was \u201cwhere the state\u2019s at.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2023 after Scott endorsed\u00a0Donald Trump<\/a> for President while DeSantis was still a candidate, DeSantis said it was an attempt to \u201cshort circuit\u201d the voters.<\/p>\n

That same year amid DeSantis\u2019 conflict over parental rights legislation with The Walt Disney Co.<\/a>,\u00a0Scott said it was important for Governors to \u201cwork with<\/a>\u201d major companies in their states.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The critiques went both ways.<\/p>\n

When running for office, DeSantis distanced himself from Scott amid controversy about the Senator\u2019s blind trust for his assets as Governor.<\/p>\n

\u201cI basically made decisions to serve in uniform, as a prosecutor, and in Congress to my financial detriment,\u201d\u00a0DeSantis said<\/a> in October 2018. \u201cI\u2019m not entering (office) with a big trust fund or anything like that, so I\u2019m not going to be entering office with those issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2020, when the state\u2019s creaky unemployment website couldn\u2019t handle the surge of applicants for reemployment assistance as the pandemic shut down businesses, DeSantis\u00a0likened it to a \u201cjalopy in the Daytona 500<\/a>\u201d and Scott urged him to \u201cquit blaming others<\/a>\u201d for the website his administration inherited.<\/p>\n

The chill between the former and current Governors didn\u2019t abate in time for 2022\u2019s hurricane season, when Scott said DeSantis didn\u2019t talk to him after the fearsome\u00a0Hurricane Ian<\/a>\u00a0ravaged the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The cold war between Florida\u2019s Governor and his predecessor is nearly seven years old and tensions show no…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[14661,14662,28,30,29,7289,4455,3856],"class_list":["post-73649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-agency-for-health-care-administration","tag-ahca","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-gov-ron-desantis","tag-hope-florida-foundation","tag-rick-scott"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}