With primaries out of the way, tomorrow will be the official start of the general election for Florida's next governor. It's also the day that Rick Scott's former lieutenant governor, Jennifer Carroll, releases her autobiography, When You Get There.
Spoiler alert: She's not very nice to the guv in it.
Though Carroll had criticized Scott during the 2010 Republican primary, she was asked to join the ticket as his running mate. She's still not sure why. She thinks it's perhaps because no one else wanted the job.
According to excerpts given to the Tampa Bay Times, Carroll met with two of Scott's attorneys in Miami, had a brief meeting with Scott, and shortly after received a phone call offering her the gig.
"I was still wondering why he had chosen me. He never gave me a real answer to that question," she writes. "I wasn't one of the good old boys, and he was a millionaire with his own plane. Why me?"
She never gelled with her running mate. She claims he lacks friendly instincts. He forgot her birthday, and she tells of a time when she fell and bumped her head and Scott reacted weirdly.
"The governor said, 'Oh, you hit your head? OK.' And that was the end of it," she writes in an excerpt published in the Tallahassee Democrat. "Clearly, something was missing there, some ability to make personal connections that he just didn't have."
Carroll says that she was given little to do as lieutenant governor (the position has no duties listed in the state constitution) and that her access to Scott was limited at best. She also thinks Scott is better suited to the role of business owner and isn't comfortable with the day-to-day management of people on his staff.
Carroll claims that "stealth" minority outreach she conducted helped Scott clinch his narrow victory over Democrat Alex Sink, but she says she felt like an "unwanted stepchild" during the inaugural ball.
Carroll stepped down from her position when it was revealed a consulting firm she ran as a member of the state house had done business with a chain of internet gaming cafés that were being investigated by the FBI. Carroll was never charged with any wrongdoing but was asked to resign anyway.
She, however, is still irked that Scott sent a staffer to ask her to resign and didn't do it himself. The last contact she had with him was a small note reading, "Thank you for your service as lieutenant governor of Florida."
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