Newcomer Scott downs McCollum in GOP governor primary

Rick Scott pulled off his one-man political revolution Tuesday night, narrowly defeating Attorney General Bill McCollum in the Republican primary for governor.

With most precincts counted, it became clear that Scott had overcome the might of the Republican establishment, the special interests who dominate the Capitol and a longtime politician determined to tar his character.

Scott’s win bears witness to his personal wealth — he spent at least $50 million of it on the campaign — as well as the thirst for political change in the Republican Party of Florida, which has been rocked by scandal and whose leaders worked to stop him cold.

“This is a man who took on the entire establishment and what he had was the people,” said Arlene DiBenigno, Scott’s political director. “We didn’t have a traditional campaign. We had a campaign of people who were tired of the traditional establishment. They are tired of the same old thing.”

The race was in doubt as late as 11 p.m., in large part because McCollum was beating Scott by a 2-1 margin in Miami-Dade — the biggest Republican County in the state. But even that advantage wasn’t enough, and with 90 percent of the statewide vote reported, the Associated Press projected that Scott had enough votes to win.

In what looked like a protest vote against Scott and McCollum, little-known third-party candidate Mike McCalister was receiving one of every 10 votes — far more than any poll had anticipated.

Scott, a 57-year-old Naples resident, burst on the scene in April with the first of many advertising blitzes, and cut a distinctive figure on TV with his bald head and piercing blue eyes. But he refused to debate McCollum on live statewide TV, dismissed the ritual of editorial board interviews, and repeatedly refused to make public a deposition he gave in a civil case six days before announcing his campaign.

Scott also deftly and firmly planted a foothold on McCollum’s right by aggressively supporting the Arizona law getting tough on illegal immigrants, and he relentlessly hammered McCollum as a “desperate career politician,” a message that resonated at the polls Tuesday.

With the state party chairman often by McCollum’s side, the longtime politician leveraged his relationships with the incoming House and Senate leaders, who dumped millions into a smear campaign that revolved around a record $1.7 billion Medicare fraud fine ultimately paid out by the Columbia/HCA hospital chain that Scott founded.

In the end, though, Scott’s campaign said he was winning because he successfully branded himself as the “jobs’’ candidate — the man whose campaign had the slogan ‘‘Let’s Get to Work.” They say that message will resonate in the general election just as it did Tuesday night in the primary.

Scott will face Democrat Alex Sink and independent Lawton “Bud’’ Chiles in November. Sink easily defeated little-known challenger Brian Moore in the Democratic primary.