Two is a crowd for Democrats looking to take on Rick Scott without a primary first

Even as Florida Democrats still do not have an official challenger to rival U.S. Sen. Rick Scott in next year's election, the specter of a primary election a year from now is raising concerns.

According to three sources with close knowledge of the conversations, former U.S. Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell appears ready to take on Scott, who said in January that he would seek re-election in 2024.

Mucarsel-Powell, originally from Ecuador, served one term in the U.S. House after winning the South Florida District 26 seat in the 2018 blue-wave election that saw a record 117 women win their races. She lost her 2020 bid for re-election to Republican Carlos Gimenez, who won a second term last November.

Two sources with knowledge of her plans said Mucarsel-Powell has committed to running against Scott and is getting ready with a team to launch a campaign. The sources also said in separate conversations that state Rep. Fentrice Driskell of Tampa is also considering a run. However, they said that top state Democrats prefer that Driskell, who serves as Florida House Minority Leader, run for governor in 2026.

One of the biggest concerns that political strategists engaged in these discussions said they harbor is the need to avoid a primary battle next August. Scott is personally wealthy and will have many millions of dollars to spend on his campaign as well as bruising attack ads. The 2024 Democratic senatorial nominee in Florida will need every dollar he or she can raise to strike back at the incumbent.

Jackson McMillan, a Tampa political strategist and fundraiser for Democrats, said the party needs to avoid a primary so that their nominee has more than a year to gather strength.

"Leaves us with, like, three months, barely, to flip a hotly contested seat we're going to be out-funded on. I know the ideal from the party is that we only have one candidate," McMillan said if a primary battle ensues.

No matter what there is going to be a primary, McMillan said, because one Democrat already filed in the race against Scott: Phil Ehr, a 26-year U.S. Navy veteran who unsuccessfully challenged U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz last year.

Scott already enjoys the advantage of being an incumbent in a trending red state. As of June 30, Republicans hold a voter registration edge of nearly 542,000 above Democrats.

Democratic political strategists insist they still have hope, largely because Scott has not been the most popular figure since launching his political career in 2010. He has won his three statewide elections, twice for governor and the 2018 U.S. Senate race, but by the slightest of margins.

This year, just after Scott announced his Senate re-election plans, President Joe Biden clobbered him in the State of the Union message by denouncing the senator's plan to sunset all federal programs that are not reauthorized every five years.

Placed under a national heat lamp, Scott backtracked by agreeing to exempt Medicare and Social Security as well as Veterans Administration and national defense programs from his proposal.

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Others, however, say a Democratic primary may not be such a bad outcome.

Mitchell Berger, an important Democratic donor and fundraiser, said he supports "healthy" primaries where candidates focus on policy instead of attacking one another. He said those contests help build "infrastructure" among supporters, and that resources from each candidate are consolidated at the end of a primary when a candidate wins.

"It's going to be a tough race, no matter what," Berger said. "But healthy primaries, where there's a good and respectful competition, are much better than anointing a candidate."

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Kevin Wagner, a pollster and chair of the political science department at Florida Atlantic University, agreed that a costly primary would be counterproductive for a party's eventual nominee.

"If the Democrats are going to have any chance to race against an incumbent senator, they're going to have to be fairly well financed and pretty unified," Wagner said. "If they can't do that, they're going to have a lot of trouble in the job."

But the role of fundraising can be overstated, too.

Democrat Val Demings, who challenged U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio last year, was one of the top raising and spending candidates in the nation with about $75 million in campaign spending, yet she lost against Rubio by double digits.

Either way, Wagner said, Democrats need to ramp up enthusiasm for whoever their nominee is.

"The big problem for the Democrats is not whether they have a primary or not. The big struggle for them is to have a message and the resources to generate the enthusiasm and the turnout they need to be successful in the state, and that's been the big problem we've seen in the last couple of cycles," Wagner said.

Which other Democrats could possibly run for U.S. Senate against Rick Scott?

Mucarsel-Powell has experience in federal office, and the fact that she represented a Miami-Dade County seat, Democrats say, is a plus. The county has long been a Democratic bastion but turned red in the 2022 midterm elections.

Mucarsel-Powel is also a senior adviser to Giffords, a gun-safety group founded by former Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who was critically wounded in a shooting in 2011.

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Driskell, an attorney, has been a rising star in the state Democratic Party since her election to a Tampa-area Florida House district in 2018.

State Sen. Bobby Powell, D-West Palm Beach, said that he and others have encouraged Driskell to run for governor, and he said she would be "the most qualified candidate" to seek the governor's mansion.

"She's an exciting candidate. She's double Ivy League, and she's down to earth," Powell said. "She is somebody who can motivate the crowd. She drives the needle."

Another name frequently mentioned in the U.S. Senate conversation by political strategists is Jennifer Jenkins, a Brevard County school board member. Jenkins recently introduced Vice President Kamala Harris prior to her remarks in Jacksonville on July 21, in which Harris lambasted the Florida Board of Education's changes to African-American history courses from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Jenkins said in an interview in June that she was considering running against Scott but had not made any final decisions, yet sources in her circle told The Palm Beach Post that she would not run if other name-recognized candidates ran to avoid fighting in a primary.

Stephany Matat is a politics reporter for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY-Florida network. Reach her at smatat@pbpost.com. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Florida Democrats seek challenger to Rick Scott, but not a primary