What is your plan for property taxes?
Well, we’ve got one. We’re the only candidate that has one, and the virtue of ours is, we believe, it’s paid for, meaning that will cover essential services like police, fire schools, infrastructure, but we’ll do it in a way that has some replacement taxes, a lot of savings, as well, so we’re not replacing all the $34 billion that we’re eliminating, and we completely eliminate homestead property taxes. If you lose your job, you get sick, the government doesn’t come and take your house because you can’t pay it. And I think that’s important. Something that people are really hurting with is the cost of things. And so, in addition to property taxes, we’re going to be pushing insurance rates down. We’re going to push electric rates down. We have an announcement coming later this week about electric bills, and you see all these solar farms as far as the eye can see, and it’s important that we reverse those incentives that are allowing the utilities to make more money when they charge us more money by investing in a method of energy that is far more expensive per kilowatt hour than natural gas, coal, nuclear, et cetera.
What are the benefits for Floridians with your property tax plan, and how much do you think that will save them?
Well, $34 billion is what it’ll save us. And I say that in the property tax realm, we have some replacement, so depending on how much we save is how much we’d have to, the difference we’d have to have in replacement, which is going to be leaning towards tourism, towards large corporations that kind of play games with their revenue in the state of Florida, so they pay, you know, a fair share of their taxes here. And then larger documentary stamps, one time only, but you walk in and you don’t pay any taxes on your home. So it’ll be a big hit for people that are struggling to stay in their homes on fixed income, for first time home buyers, we don’t have that. Doc stamp, you come in, first time, you never own a home anywhere, and you’re a Florida resident. The benefits are, it’s going to make Florida more affordable when it comes to home ownership.
How do you plan to fund rural counties?
Well, it’s important to me that rural counties have control over their own destiny and their own money, and so we have to figure that out, and whatever that looks like, is what we’re going to do to make sure that we’re not leaving rural counties as a ward of the state. That’s very important to me that we, you know, make sure that our rural counties are taken care of, and I did that when I was speaker, so you don’t have to say, ‘Well, this guy’s going to promise anything,’ actually, when I was speaker, if you ask some of the local folks here in Gilchrist or in Levy or Dixie, they will tell you that I came through for them when they needed me, and that’s what I’ll do when I’m governor.
And then how do you plan to handle the AI data centers?
We’re not going to have any. So I’ve been very clear about that. Just imagine, in a county of 20,000 or so people, you know, you’re going to put a hyper scale data center that draws the equivalent power of 700,000 to 800,000 people. There is one in Louisiana that draws more power than the entire city of New Orleans, just to give you some perspective. And the additional thing is, we’re in a severe drought. The Swanee River is at historic lows, and we’re going to let data centers come in and put a big pipe in the ground and suck the aquifer dry? I don’t think so. Not on my watch. So I’ve been crystal clear about that, unlike the other candidate, my opponent, my main opponent, is he wants us to lead in that area, in other words, to have as many of these data centers in Florida as possible. In his words, that we have plenty of pristine land to use. I’d like to see that pristine land stay in pristine use.
So I’m a supporter of conservation easements for our industry, for our farmers and ranchers, to make sure they can continue to give that stability, to the economy, and to their industries, here in this area. And not have it overrun by data centers or solar farms or any of these other things that are kind of scarring the rural landscape. I want to make sure that I pass down a Florida that looks very similar to the floor that I grew up in, back in the late ‘60s, and that I love, like many people here love.
How do you plan to address how AI and children interact?
Well, I’m a big fan of the AI Bill of Rights, my successor, the house speaker, who’s speaker after me, shot down, and we need to protect our kids. The difference is if a parent faces a child or any responsible adult has a child who’s depressed and contemplating suicide, you do whatever you can to make sure that doesn’t happen and get them help. AI will tell you, here’s 10 ways to kill yourself. And so we have to be realistic. This is a technology that for whatever it can do on a positive front, there’s a lot of risks, and we have to guard against those at the state level. So I’m a big proponent of parental rights, and making sure we protect AI, and that humans are in control of technology, not the other way around.
Is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you feel like needs to be addressed?
Well, sure. I mean, I think the reason I’m here is that I’m traveling the entire state. We’re going to all 67 counties. We’re going to make sure that Florida has a governor like this governor who leans in to the fight when it comes to our conservative values. And if you compare me to the other candidates on leadership under pressure, 20 years in the military, two wars, former prosecutor, compare me to other people that have been in elected office in terms of what they’ve accomplished. The governor said, the two years that I led the legislature were unmatched. They were the most consequential of any state in America. When you look at vision, we have written plans for not only property taxes, but health freedom, end public corruption, and human trafficking. We’ll have, you know, policies coming up soon on lowering electric rates, lowering insurance rates. You want somebody with a big vision, and you want somebody who showed up to the fight. So I’m the only candidate in this race that really showed up, contributed a ton of money out of a political committee to stop the pot and abortion amendments, mainly abortion is the one I focused on. And so if you want somebody who’s going to beat the left wherever they raise their head, as a conservative primary voter, you know, you’re looking at them, and would love to have the honor of the support of folks here in the county.