TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- Sen. Bill Nelson, a longtime Florida political figure who first arrived on Capitol Hill in the decades when Democrats dominated this presidential battleground state, conceded his bitterly close re-election bid to Republican Rick Scott on Sunday, ceding a razor-thin race to the outgoing governor after a bruising recount.
Nelson gave up his quest after days of acrimony and tense recounting leading to a midday Sunday deadline for Florida's counties to turn in their official results. Florida will not officially certify the final totals until Tuesday, but the totals showed Nelson trailing Scott by slightly more than 10,000 votes.
"It has been a rewarding journey as well as a very humbling experience," Nelson said in a videotaped statement. "I was not victorious in this race but I still wish to strongly reaffirm the cause for which we fought: A public office is a public trust."
The close of nearly two weeks of high political drama in the presidential swing state likely spelled the end of the political career of Nelson, 76. First elected to Congress 40 years ago, Nelson had been a Democratic survivor in an era when Republicans swept to power in Florida in the '90s. He was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2000 and was making his fourth attempt at re-election.
Nelson, a Florida native, was defeated by Scott, a multimillionaire businessman and relative newcomer to the state who had been urged to run by President Donald Trump. A Scott victory will help Republicans boost their majority in the U.S. Senate.
This marked the third time Scott, who did not jump into politics until eight years ago, has barely edged a Democratic opponent.
Scott ran a harsh campaign against Nelson, calling him ineffective and out of touch.
"Now the campaign truly is behind us, and that's where we need to leave it," Scott said in a statement soon after official results were posted. "We must do what Americans have always done: Come together for the good of our state and our country. My focus will not be on looking backward, but on doing exactly what I ran on: making Washington work."
Trump congratulated Scott on Twitter: "From day one Rick Scott never wavered. He was a great Governor and will be even a greater Senator in representing the People of Florida. Congratulations to Rick on having waged such a courageous and successful campaign!"
Nelson was seen as a moderate who rarely made waves or earned much national exposure as he focused on Florida-specific issues. One of his more notable moments came when he flew on Space Shuttle Columbia while serving in Congress.
Florida's other senator, Republican Marco Rubio, said he would miss working with Nelson.
"I knew Bill Nelson not just as a Democratic senator, but also as a man of genuine faith, integrity and character," Rubio said in a statement. "A man who served our country with a dignity that is increasingly rare in our modern politics."
This marks only the second electoral defeat of Nelson's long political career. He lost a Democratic primary for governor to eventual winner Lawton Chiles in 1990.
After it became clear the Senate race would head to a recount, Nelson and Democrats filed several lawsuits that challenged everything from Scott's authority over the state's election division to deadlines for mail-in ballots.
Amid the recount, Scott suggested that some county election officials were allowing fraud to occur.
Republicans raised questions about how some election officials were counting the ballots.
The South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported late Sunday that one of those officials, Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, had presented a resignation letter to step down in January.
The report cited an attorney who works as counsel to the Broward elections office, Burnadette Norris-Weeks, but Snipes couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
In California, Democrat Gil Cisneros captured a Republican-held U.S. House seat, capping a Democratic rout in which the party picked up six congressional seats in the state.
The Cisneros victory Saturday cements a stunning political realignment that will leave a vast stretch of the Los Angeles metropolitan area under Democratic control in the House.
With Republican Young Kim's defeat, four Republican-held House districts all or partly in Orange County, once a nationally known GOP stronghold, will have shifted in one election to the Democratic column. The change means that the county will have only Democrats representing its residents in Washington next year.
Cisneros, 47, had been locked in a close race with Kim in a district that has grown increasingly diverse. It's about equally divided among Republicans, Democrats and independents, as it is with Asians, Hispanics and whites.
"In one of the most diverse districts in the country I learned that for all of our differences, we all care about the same things," said Cisneros, who will be the first Hispanic to represent the district.
"Most of all, we want to live in a world brought together by hope, not divided by hate," he said in a statement.
Information for this article was contributed by Michael R. Blood of The Associated Press.
A Section on 11/19/2018