TALLAHASSEE -- Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll’s surprising resignation spares Gov. Rick Scott a decision that increasingly looked inevitable: to drop her as his running mate in 2014.

Carroll looked good in 2010 when Scott, a political neophyte, had little else going for him other than his vast personal wealth. Her military record and race brought diversity to the ticket, but in office she turned into a political liability by violating a cardinal rule.

She became an embarrassment to Scott and a distraction from his agenda.

The CEO-turned-governor who takes pride in hiring the right people was forced again to see a top appointee step down, this time in disgrace.

It’s particularly embarrassing because Carroll was Scott’s public partner and represented his first big political decision.

“It’s very disappointing to have to bring this news to you,” Scott said Wednesday. “My focus, as you know, is getting our state back to work.”

Scott has parted ways with state agency heads who flopped, hired three chiefs of staff in 18 months and overhauled the communications shop that shapes his message.

And as he has tried to shift focus from his controversial about-face on Medicaid expansion to his more popular goal of increasing teachers’ pay, Carroll’s resignation drowned out other messages and horrified Republican activists, adding new turmoil in Scott’s world.

“This entire thing was such a shock,” said Cindy Graves of Jacksonville, a friend of Carroll’s and president of the Florida Federation of Republican Women.

In their first appearance after winning office in 2010, Scott, with Carroll by his side in a Fort Lauderdale hotel ballroom, said: “Jennifer and I are going to surround ourselves with absolutely the best people out there.”

Then, one by one, eight agency heads came and went in Scott’s first two years, and with the uncertainty of the 2014 election approaching, more are expected to leave.

Slowly but surely, the Scott-Carroll pairing looked awkward.

The latest sign of Carroll’s growing irrelevance came last week. In Scott’s annual State of the State address to the Legislature, Carroll merited a passing one-sentence mention. The Miami port director, Bill Johnson, received more time.

Scott called Carroll “tireless” Wednesday, and once described her as the hardest-working lieutenant governor in the country. But if she was, it was hard for anybody to see.

She had few duties other than chairing a board promoting the space industry, and every time she made news it seemed to be negative, to the point where it was widely believed Scott would have chosen someone else to be his running mate in 2014.

He dodged that question Wednesday.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said.

Carroll is a former lawmaker who was used sparingly to push Scott’s agenda through the Legislature. She’s an African-American who was largely silent when black lawmakers recently assailed Scott’s record at hiring minorities for judgeships.

Most embarrassingly, she’s a decorated 20-year U.S. Navy veteran whose downfall stemmed from ties to Allied Veterans of the World, which authorities say was a criminal enterprise that exploited veterans to make money. Allied Veterans was a client of Carroll’s public relations firm.