“I’m here mostly for economic issues,” said Brian Foster, 21, of Orlando, who wore jeans and a blue bandana around his neck. “A lot of our elected officials still don’t believe they will take us seriously. That’s kind of disheartening.” He said his parents are losing their home due to foreclosure.

Similar protests took place in Tampa and 18 other cities by Progress Florida, Florida Public Interest Research Group and other grass-roots organizations that said the policies of Scott and Republican lawmakers hurt the middle class.

Scott’s speech came on a day when a new Quinnipiac University poll showed him still unpopular with a majority of Floridians. The poll showed 50 percent of the people disapprove of his job as governor and 38 percent approve. But Scott can take some comfort in the fact that the Legislature ranked lower in the Quinnipiac poll, with 49 percent disapproving of its performance and 33 percent approving.

Scott won high marks from leading Republicans such as Sen. John Thrasher, R-St. Augustine. “Incredibly relaxed, focused,” he said. “I think the governor’s hitting his stride.”

Scott, who by his own admission is not a gifted orator, won style points with some lawmakers. “He put a little humor in,” said Sen. Dennis Jones, R-Seminole. “I think a nice touch is he brought in people in the audience.”

In the visitors’ gallery, Scott singled out three Floridians: Penny Mecklenburg, whose husband John, a sheriffs’ deputy in Hernando County, was killed in the line of duty; business owner Rachel Waatti, owner of Nicola’s Donuts in Tampa, and Heather Viniar, a first-year teacher at Immokalee High School near Naples.

Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, decried Republican policies of cutting the budget year in and year out ($4 billion this year and projected cuts of up to $2 billion next year).

“If you continue to cut, cut, cut in the name of efficiency, there’s nothing there to take care of the basic services and needs,” Joyner said.

Added Rep. Jeff Clemens, D-Lake Worth: “The speech was all about contradictions. We cut the education budget last year, and now we’re going to restore it. We support police officers who died in the line of duty, but we don’t support their pensions.”

The annual lawmaking session opened two months earlier than usual because it’s the one year in 10 when the Legislature must redraw all congressional and legislative districts to reflect population and demographic changes.

The political marketing of Scott’s agenda began in earnest Tuesday afternoon in the House Appropriations Committee.

During the session, Scott’s budget chief, Jerry McDaniel, said cuts in rates to hospitals are long overdue because the current system rewards inefficiency and has wide variations for the same medical procedures from city to city.

“There’s no incentive for them to become more efficient,” McDaniel said of hospitals. “It needs to have a new look taken at it.”

Herald/Times staff writers David DeCamp, Mary Ellen Klas, Kathleen McGrory, Tia Mitchell, Toluse Olorunnipa and Katie Sanders contributed to this report.