Sen. Bill Nelson Concedes to Rick Scott in Contested Florida Race

Florida’s three term Democratic Senator Bill Nelson conceded to Rep. Rick Scott on Sunday, after an acrimonious recount process that included multiple lawsuits brought by Scott’s team. Nelson said that the initial manual recount showed no path to victory for his campaign, according to the Washington Post. The results of the recount will be certified on Tuesday.

On Twitter, Nelson called to end the divisiveness of U.S. politics.

From the Post:

“We have to move beyond a politics that aims not just to defeat but to destroy — where truth is threatened as disposable, where falsehoods abound and that the free press is assaulted as the enemy of the people,” Nelson said. “There has been a gathering darkness in our politics in recent years.”

The Republicans now control the Senate with a majority of 52 seats. The final outstanding Senate seat will be decided in the November 27th Mississippi runoff race.

Scott also called for unity.

“Now the campaign truly is behind us, and that’s where we need to leave it,” Scott said in a statement. “We must do what Americans have always done: come together for the good of our state and our country.”

The recount process was bitter, with Scott suing Broward County and Palm Beach County over ballot counting procedures, and bringing additional lawsuits against elections officials. In the end, the margin between the two candidates was at 10,033 votes of the 8 million cast.

This is the first time since well before the U.S. political realignment in the ‘60s that Florida has had two Republican Senators. Earlier today, Democrat Andrew Gillum also conceded his gubernatorial race to Ron DeSantis, meaning that Florida will also have a Republican governor.

“People are not happy that the blue wave hit the rest of the country and missed Florida,” Jacob Sanders, a Democratic consultant in Florida, told the Post. “People are looking around and saying, ‘What happened?’ The recount was a really good way to make people stop asking. There’s going to be a reckoning now.”