from The News Service of Florida
Mary Anne Carter on Tuesday became the second top aide to Gov. Rick Scott to leave the governor’s executive team, saying she’d always planned to leave after six months, wants to return to her family in Tennessee and is itching to work on more campaigns.
Carter’s resignation, an-nounced Tuesday and effective June 30, follows the announcement on Monday that Scott’s chief of staff since his inauguration, Mike Prendergast, is leaving to head up the state Department of Veterans Affairs. Prendergast goes before a special Cabinet meeting today for approval for the new job.
The moves inevitably have raised talk of a shake-up that comes as the governor looks at approval ratings below 30 percent and increasing questions about when Florida will feel the results of Scott’s promise to create jobs.
The unemployment rate has indeed shrunk since he took office, but only incrementally.
Additionally, many government workers who may lose their jobs as a result of policies pushed by Scott have been more vocal than those satisfied with his performance.
The change also comes as outsiders say Scott is having trouble putting a positive message out to Florida residents, despite efforts by the Republican Party to extol his successes through robo-calls to households and a push in recent weeks to do interviews on AM radio with mostly sympathetic interviewers.
Steve MacNamara, chief of staff to Senate President Mike Haridopolos who does double duty as the Senate’s general counsel, has widely been talked about as a possible replacement for Prendergast.
MacNamara is a longtime Capitol insider, going back to when he served as chief of staff to former House Speaker John Thrasher in the late 1990s.
Carter is widely seen as Scott’s chief strategist, firmly involved in nearly every policy, political and image decision made in the governor’s office since Scott entered the governor’s mansion in January.
Carter is primarily a political operative. She’s made her career as an opposition researcher, including doing work for former Republican presidential candidates Fred Thompson and Bob Dole. She wants to return to the business of working on campaigns as the 2012 cycle heats up.
While working in Tallahassee, Carter’s family, including a young daughter, has remained behind at her Tennessee home.
Scott asked her to stay on longer, but she declined.