With Florida’s legislative season underway in April, the Twitter buzz about the gubernatorial candidates picked up quite a bit, and most of the pick-up occurred in Rick Scott’s mentions:

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At the same time bills were getting passed and the discussion turned from theoretical to actual, Rick Scott’s sentiment also rose significantly:

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This suggests to me that discussion of the work of being governor is better than discussion of the politics of being governor for Scott.  It’s been my (unscientific) observation that Scott’s team tries to keep focus on the day-in-day-out aspects of being governor.  Maybe the flurry of new laws will cement that practical focus for him.  And maybe all Scott has to do is keep looking executive, rather than political, to prevail in November.

Still, I’m hesitant to read too much into all this until everyone goes home from Tallahassee and the discussion returns to the race itself.  The first couple of days in May show the spike at the end of April was a bit of an anomaly, so we will have to wait a while to see what the new normal is.

It would be nice to think that the Crist campaign is prepared to pounce on Scott in social media.  But as I’ve said before, the campaign is not very strong socially. Not much has changed in April, so I will just say those criticisms still stand: inconsistent level of effort, no real strategy towards content, etc. The legislative session gives him a reason (maybe not a great reason) to lay low now, but if he doesn’t come guns ablazin’ afterwards he’s putting his candidacy at risk.  God knows his “give me money because I need money” emails aren’t going to win this for him…