President Donald J. Trump and First Lady Melania Trump, alongside Florida Governor Rick Scott and his wife Mrs. Ann Scott, tour the Lynn Haven Community in Lynn Haven, Fla. Monday, Oct. 15, 2018, and meet with residents impacted by Hurricane Michael. (Official White House Photo by Andrea Hanks)
Ledyard King, writing in USA Today explains Florida Governor Rick Scott’s life of hard work. Scott has seen both sides of the jobs/government programs coin, and he knows that hard work improved his life more than any government program ever could.
The son of a J.C. Penney store clerk and a truck-driving stepfather, Florida Gov. Rick Scott grew up in economically challenging conditions as his parents struggled to provide for five children.
He lived for a time in public housing. The car was repossessed. His family lacked health insurance, so he said it was an “unbelievable godsend” when a Shriner’s hospital stepped forward to take care of his younger brother’s hip disease.
The story of a meager Midwest upbringing — one Scott has used in campaign ads and repeatedly shared in winning two terms as Republican governor of the country’s biggest swing state — might have made him a progressive crusader for expanded government programs to help the poor and disenfranchised.
But the 65-year-old Scott worked his way through college, obtained a law degree and rose to become CEO of Columbia/HCA, the nation’s largest private, for-profit hospital chain in the U.S.He became a multi-millionaire.
His personal experience is one that has shaped his conservative political view of government’s role in society and one that defined his two terms as governor of the nation’s third-largest state.
Read more here.
