After violent protesters stormed the Capitol and disrupted Wednesday’s proceedings, both of Florida’s Republican senators voted to uphold the electoral votes in Arizona but were split on Pennsylvania’s results.
U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio voted against an objection filed in Pennsylvania. U.S. Sen. Rick Scott voted in favor of it, as he said he “likely” would early Wednesday before the insurrection broke out.
Both voted to reject an objection to the results in Arizona. When the Senate voted late Wednesday night, few supported the objection. It failed 93-6.
The six senators who voted to sustain that objection were all Republicans: Ted Cruz of Texas; Josh Hawley of Missouri; Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi; John Kennedy of Louisiana; Roger Marshall of Kansas; and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama.
The objection to Pennsylvania’s results failed 92-7 early Thursday morning. Scott, Cruz, Hawley, Hyde-Smith, Marshall, Tuberville and Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, voted to sustain.
In a speech on the Senate floor late Wednesday, Rubio said he understood why those on his side of the political aisle are upset and distrust the election results.
“They have doubts that the election was legitimate,” he said. He added that democracy is fragile, but it is not held together by elections. “Democracy is held together by people confident in the elections and the ability to uphold its results.”
He went on to say that objecting to the results of the election is a “terrible idea at this moment.”
“Just hours ago, a young lady died in this Capitol. That means somebody somewhere in this country got a phone call that their daughter was dead,” he said. “I think it’s important to think about those things on a night like tonight where so much has happened.”
The insurrection on the Capitol steps looked like “third world style anti-American anarchy,” he wrote on Twitter earlier in the day. He recalled how in his grandfather’s 60 years of life, he saw his country stage an armed insurrection after a contested election that gave rise to an armed dictator in Cuba.
“My entire life I have lived with and next to people who came to America because their country was chaotic and their country was unsafe,” he said. “What I have seen today looks more like those countries than the extraordinary nation that I call home.”
Many Republican members of Congress, who like the senators, have kept their heads down in recent days, also faced momentous decisions.
Scott, in a statement issued an hour before the joint session of Congress began at 1 p.m., said he would “listen to any and all objectives that are raised. I will pay careful attention to the evidence and arguments presented by both sides.” He said, “Pennsylvania is of particular concern to me, and I will likely vote to sustain the objection to their slate of electors.”
Voting against one state’s electors, though not all, would allow Scott to attempt to appease both sides, supporters of the president who don’t like the election outcome and people who regard attempts to overturn the results as anti-democratic.
The senators’ and representatives’ choices won’t affect who becomes president on Jan. 20. Biden won 306 electoral votes (270 are needed to win), the same number Trump got in 2016 and called a “massive landslide.”
But Trump hasn’t accepted the results. Before the storming of the Capitol, a large number of Republican representatives and senators said they would challenge the results from several states Trump lost. They, and the president, have raised many allegations of voter fraud, none of which have been proven and many of which have emanated from the most conspiratorial reaches of the internet.
The Senate and House abruptly recessed their debates shortly afterward as protesters, encouraged by an earlier Trump speech, massed outside the Capitol and rampaged inside once they breached security.
“When you continue to spew conspiracy theories, viciously attack your opponents, attack our democratic institutions, and attempt to overturn an election, is it any wonder this is the result? Every Senator and House Member who votes to reject the outcome of the election owns this,” U.S. Rep. Ted Deutch, a Broward/Palm Beach county Democrat, wrote on Twitter.
Earlier Deutch objected to Republican efforts to reject some states’ electors. “Republicans are trying to shred the Constitution to overturn the votes of the American people. They will not succeed. But every Senator and Representative who objects to the simple but important act of making @JoeBiden‘s victory official is betraying their oath of office.”
Even though Trump and his supporters don’t have the votes to overturn the election, the normally routine acceptance of electoral votes has turned into a major test for Republicans.
Anyone voting for the challenge will be subjected to scorn from colleagues, potential donors or leaders in the business community that consider going along with Trump as anti-democratic. That view could be even stronger after what pro-Trump forces did in the Capitol on Wednesday.
Anyone voting against the challenge could be subject to the wrath of Trump in his post-presidency — something especially important for people like Rubio and Scott, both of whom harbor presidential ambitions. Both have taken pains since before Trump was elected in 2016 to avoid doing anything that displeases Trump or gets crosswise with his intensely loyal supporters. Trump and his older sons, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, all told supporters at a Washington, D.C., rally that they would encourage primary challenges to Republicans who don’t do what he wants.
Trump already has suggested primary challenges to Republicans who haven’t gone along with his post-election calls, and promised to campaign against one, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, who until this year has been a Trump acolyte. Rubio has a more immediate concern than the 2024 Republican presidential primaries; he’s up for re-election in 2022 and it would be relatively easy for Trump to get involved in the state race as he’s expected to spend much of his time in Florida after his term ends on Jan. 20.
Republican leaders in Palm Beach County, where Trump is likely to be based at his Mar-a-Lago Club, this week urged Rubio, Scott and all other Florida Republicans to support the election challenges.
There are multiple possibilities if a politician tries to appease both sides, such as voting to accept the electoral votes from a state Trump lost while calling for some kind of audit or investigation into election integrity. Or, a lawmaker could vote different ways on different states. That’s what Scott did.
All of Florida’s 11 Democratic representatives are certain to accept the election results, although U.S. Rep. Alcee Hastings did not vote. “No matter what the GOP does to try and subvert the will of the people today, there will be only one result: President Joe Biden,” U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Broward/Miami-Dade county Democrat, posted Wednesday on Twitter.
In the end, Deutch wrote on Twitter, “the House and Senate will certify President-elect Biden’s historic victory. President Trump’s inability to accept his loss does not change the facts. Claims that anything else is true is an insult to our democratic traditions. #AmericaHasSpoken.”
U.S. Rep. Lois Frankel, a Palm Beach County Democrat said, “President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris won the 2020 election decisively, with a historic margin of victory,” she said, adding that voting to accept the electoral college votes amounted to a vote to “proudly defend our democracy and the will of the voters.”
Here is the Florida roll call for both objections:
Gus Bilirakis, didn’t vote
Vern Buchanan, no
Kat Cammack, yes
Mario Diaz-Balart, yes
Byron Donalds, yes
Neal Dunn, yes
Scott Franklin, yes
Matt Gaetz, yes
Carlos Gimenez, yes
Brian Mast, yes
Bill Posey, yes
John Rutherford, yes
Maria Elvira Salazar was not sworn in by the vote as she is recovering from COVID-19.
Greg Steube, yes
Michael Waltz, no
Dan Webster, yes
Sun Sentinel staff writer Victoria Ballard contributed to this report.
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com or on Twitter @browardpolitics
