Early voting has begun for the Florida primary election. I’m registered as a Republican (can’t go back to the Party of Fauci!) and the choices are a little unsettling.
Choosing a governor would be easy if Ron DeSantis had endorsed someone, but the GOAT has kept quiet.
Let’s start with Paul Renner. He attended a liberal arts college, served in the Navy, and then went to University of Florida law school. He was Speaker of the House during part of the DeSantis administration. His campaign web site frankly is either the work of an insane person or, perhaps, a smart person who believes that everyone who reads it is stupid.
Reduce homeowners’ premiums by 20% when the insurance companies don’t make 20% profits currently? (same issue faced by Democrats hoping to be Santa Claus; see The next Florida governor could be an inverse Mamdani Democrat (David Jolly’s plan to steal from renters and give to property owners)) Data centers vs. Florida’s aquifer? Is anyone even proposing massive development of data centers here? In any case, a data center uses roughly the same amount of water as a golf course, of which Florida has nearly 1,300.
“Shift the tax burden to international real estate speculators”? How can that work in most of Florida’s 67 counties? International buyers are supposedly roughly 5% of the total dollar volume in Florida, but they’re heavily concentrated in a handful of counties.
Jay Collins is the current Lieutenant Governor, appointed about a year ago by Ron DeSantis when Jeanette Nuñez left to become head of Florida International University. He has a distinguished military career, including serving as a Green Beret. His campaign site is a little less insane. He wants to exempt a larger amount of homestead residents’ home value from property tax, which I think is a terrible idea (there is already a huge discrepancy between what long-term residents pay and what new arrivals or second-home owners pay because homesteads are taxed at their purchase price plus a maximum of 3% per year appreciation or CPI, whichever is less; DeSantis is at risk of losing his GOAT title, in my view, for trying to further derange Florida’s property tax system via a ballot question in November.).
This seems like a terrible idea for anyone who hates traffic jams:
Collins promises to lower insurance costs, but not by a specific percentage and mostly via the “tort reforms” (making it tougher to sue insurers and get all legal fees paid) that were enacted in 2022 and actually did bring down premiums:
Next we turn to Byron Donalds, currently in Congress representing some of the world’s richest people (Naples, Sanibel), which is ironic because Wikipedia says that he grew up in Crown Heights, Brooklyn under the care of “his single mother.” His issues page:
“Enact the Trump Agenda”? How is the governor of Florida going to surrender to the Islamic Republic of Iran?
“Make America Great Again”? That actually works against Florida’s interests. What helps Florida is when New York City, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, and Los Angeles fall apart and/or go into a Fauci-suggested lockdown. If the foregoing centers of American wealth were as nice as West Palm Beach and Sarasota, there would be no reason for rich people to move to Florida.
“taxpayer handouts to illegals”? Florida doesn’t do a lot in this area, I don’t think, other than pay for health care when the undocumented show up at emergency rooms (and how would we cut that off?). The real solution, though, would be to help the undocumented migrate onward to New York and Maskachusetts where they’re guaranteed a taxpayer-funded lifestyle. Donalds doesn’t seem to propose that.
“property insurance crisis”? Maybe we could lose another 10% on premiums if all disputes between homeowners and insurers were moved into a specialized and streamlined resolution system staffed by arbitrators who actually knew something about home construction and repair. Beyond that, though, how is it a “crisis” if rates are higher than in some other states because of hurricane risk? ChatGPT’s estimates of available juice to squeeze from the insurance lemon:
(Look how expensive agents are! Maybe this is an argument for socialism. If there were just one insurance company, run by the state, rates could come down by about 20% because there would be no agents and no underwriting profit! What could go wrong?)
I hate to say that the candidate endorsed by Donald Trump is the least insane of the above, but perhaps he is! Mostly, I’m saddened that the only way to win an election in the U.S. seems to be promising people free stuff, absurd stuff, and impossible stuff. Average IQ in the U.S. is falling, but maybe this isn’t a new phenomenon. After all, when Lyndon Johnson and Congress in the 1960s decided to simultaneously expand the welfare state (Medicaid, Medicare, public housing, food stamps) open the borders (Hart-Celler), that was implicitly a promise that the U.S. would be infinitely rich forever. When FDR and Congress set up Social Security in the 1930s and paid the first beneficiary 1000X what she’d contributed via taxes that was tantamount to a “free lunch” promise.
The choice for Senate is much simpler. DeSantis-appointed fifth-generation Floridian Ashley Moody is the incumbent and everyone seems to like her. (Well, maybe the undocumented don’t like her because she’s in favor of border security and, when that fails, ICE. If she were in the Islamic Republic of Michigan running against Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed she’d probably try to deport him to Egypt.)
DeSantis-appointed Blaise Ingoglia is the incumbent CFO. His opponent wins in the beard department:
Wilton Simpson is running to retain his job as Agriculture Commissioner. I won’t be voting for his opponent, Matt Taylor, because he styles himself “Matt the Welder” and that reminds me of “Graham Platner the Oyster Farmer.” Also, Matt the Welder is opposed to “government aerial mosquito spraying”, according to ChatGPT. One of the great things about our life in Florida has been that we’ve cut our DEET use by 90% compared to when we lived in the Boston suburbs (tick-infested 7 months per year and horrific mosquitos for 3-4 months per year). If Palm Beach County wants to use an Airbus A380 filled with whatever kills mosquitos I am all for it! (see Indigenous Peoples’ Day and the Mosquito for a recommendation of a great book on how horrible this insect is; see also Kill them all (mosquitoes) with genetic engineering and let God sort out the mutant survivors) Note that ChatGPT might be hallucinating/lying. Taylor seems to be hostile to herbicides and perhaps some of his supporters assume that he will also be hostile to insecticides. Regardless, “welder” is too close to “oyster farmer” for comfort, unless of course one is a progressive female looking for some action…
There’s also a race for a judge. Schnelle Tonge v. Jacob Noble. Ms. Tonge is endorsed by a lot of Palm Beach County officials while Mr. Noble is endorsed by the police. Noble seems to have a lot more litigation experience, e.g., he’s admitted to practice at the U.S. Supreme Court, a federal appeals court, and three federal district courts.
Update: I biked over to Florida Atlantic University’s Jupiter (Abacoa) campus and voted early. There was a substantial staff and nobody in line. I was offered the opportunity to use the voting machine, which ultimately prints a paper ballot, in English, Spanish, or Haitian Creole. It seems that, in our infinite political wisdom, we’ve created a huge class of eligible voters (U.S. citizens) who can’t understand the most basic English. ChatGPT explains that someone might be a birthright citizen and never learn English due to being taken back to Haiti or wherever as a baby. The anchor baby returns at age 18, let’s suppose, and decides to vote. We also hand out citizenship to people who are over 50 without requiring them to pass the English test that is normally required for naturalization. Finally, unlike Australia, which bars the entry of the disabled as likely to become a burden on their overstressed health care system, “a qualifying physical or developmental disability or mental impairment can exempt a naturalization applicant from the English requirement.”
Once we’ve filled the United States with citizens who don’t speak English, a federal law requires that we facilitate votes from those completely-disconnected-from-legacy-Americans-by-language citizens. The Voting Rights Act, Section 203:
… citizens of language minorities have been effectively excluded from participation in the electoral process. Among other factors, the denial of the right to vote of such minority group citizens is ordinarily directly related to the unequal educational opportunities afforded them resulting in high illiteracy and low voting participation.
The language minority provisions of the Voting Rights Act require that when a covered state or political subdivision provides registration or voting notices, forms, instructions, assistance, or other materials or information relating to the electoral process, including ballots, it shall provide them in the language of the applicable minority group as well as in the English language.
The requirements of the law are straightforward: all election information that is available in English must also be available in the minority language so that all citizens will have an effective opportunity to register, learn the details of the elections, and cast a free and effective ballot.
There is some discrimination, according to the Justice Department!
Covered language minorities are limited to American Indians, Asian Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Spanish-heritage citizens – the groups that Congress found to have faced barriers in the political process.
Why not Arabic for the noble enrichers of Dearborn, Michigan who’ve brought their parents over? “Chinese” is the second-largest non-English language spoken at home after Spanish (Census), but no provisions are made to facilitate voting by immigrants from China or Chinese anchor babies who’ve recently shown up as adults.
It surprises me that the U.S. hasn’t completely melted down. The lowest-earning 50 percent of eligible voters pay 3 percent of federal income tax (i.e., they receive a 97 percent discount on the federal government services that they can vote to receive; it would make sense for them to vote for a daily federal government delivery of popcorn even if they think they’ll eat it just once per month). We make huge efforts to gather votes from people who aren’t able to speak English, who have a “mental impairment” (I guess that’s consistent with the 100% disabled Graham Platner almost being elected Senator), and who may have lived in the U.S. for only a few months (the anchor-baby-returns-to-birthplace scenario)), and who aren’t interested enough in or informed enough about voting to zip over to the polls (sending out vote-by-mail packages to everyone).
When did the election process become a continuous function? It used to have some gaps. Now I’m not even sure it is real-valued, or a function at all.
[I knew Dusty Hill wasn’t dead. I saw ZZ Top live 2 1/2 times back in the day, once with my dad. One was partially rained out at Red Rocks in Colorado.]
Hi Phil. Serious question: what would your ideal candidate look like, in the sense that like a realistic yet ideal candidate. e.g. it would be political suicide to reduce the homestead exemption, but perhaps you could share some more of what the policies should be so we can get another insight into the way you think and benefit from the 300 IQ.
Anon: That’s a great question. DeSantis was pretty close to my ideal until he went off recently into “let’s expand the homestead exemption so much that we create tons of voters who have no taxpaying skin in the game” (on the November ballot). I can’t account for DeSantis’s passion on this point. We already have quite a few voters who get a 50 or 70 percent discount on what they’re voting for (e.g., someone who bought a place in Palm Beach 15 years ago).
I guess my ideal candidate would say “there’s no free lunch beyond the existing tourists who pay sales tax and then go home without demanding any services” and then talk about striving to make state government as efficient as possible. Regarding the home insurance stuff that has politicians making absurd promises, I do think it would be worth diverting any disputes out of the conventional trial courts.
I would love to see a candidate who promised to simplify government and taxation. Eliminate back-to-school sales tax holidays and hurricane prep sales tax holidays. (I just did a Google search and more had been added! There’s a camping, fishing, and hunting supplies holiday this year to celebrate American 250 (see https://floridarevenue.com/HuntFishCamp/Pages/default.aspx for how the state won’t tax you if you’re buying firearms, ammo, etc.). There’s a $500 sales tax refund for impact windows (much paperwork required to claim it). It’s absurd. If the state doesn’t need all the revenue then lower the rate rather than narrowing the base.
Oh yes, eliminate the sales tax on aircraft! If that sounds inconsistent with the above, it isn’t. People don’t pay it. See https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2025/04/15/florida-aircraft-sales-tax-avoidance-talk-at-sun-n-fun/
I guess Florida isn’t as absurd as California. https://www.gov.ca.gov/2026/08/07/governor-newsom-announces-3500-instant-rebates-now-available-for-californians-buying-their-first-zero-emission-vehicle/ is the latest. Tax people who drive old Corollas to give $3500 in “free” money to college-educated upper-middle-class people who treat themselves to a brand new Tesla Y L.
> Serious question:
Surely you are joking, anon.
CA ballots use 32 different languages vs mere 3 for FL. CA wins again!
Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese (includes Taiwanese and Mandarin), Farsi, Filipino, Gujarati, Hindi, Hispanic, Hmong, Indonesian, Iu Mien, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Lao, Malay, Mongolian, Nepali, Pashto, Punjabi, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Telugu, Thai, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese.
https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voting-resources/language-requirements
Never heard of “Tagalong”. Did they remove “Hopalong” after Reagan left office? (I was going to leave some comments on Florida tourism and property taxes, but Phil already knows what is most advantaged for himself.) Horses were the original personal transportation, bring ’em back! (Horse manure smells much better than the hot air coming out of politicians mouths.)
OAG: “most advantaged for himself” isn’t part of the above analysis. An amendment to the Florida constitution to allow an income and/or estate tax would have some relevance to our family (no candidate from any party has proposed this, to my knowledge). Complications added to the property tax system won’t get us excited, though we do own a homesteaded house! Palm Beach County isn’t one of the FL counties that would be dramatically affected by exempting homesteaded properties. We’re not quite as immune as Miami-Dade, but compared to many other FL counties we have a huge tax base of commercial property and second homes (quite a few $billions just in Palm Beach).
If I could take over from Ron DeSantis as Dictator of Florida, I would chuck the entire property tax system in favor of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax (and, sadly for homesteaders like me, without any reductions for homesteaders!)
(the hard-core economists would say to kill sales tax as well, but it might make sense in Florida to have some consumption taxes if they can be designed to fall on tourists)
California is on the right track by using ballots to accommodate its diverse population. It is time to take that approach to the next level.
Let’s start with traffic signs and all other signs in public buildings. Stop, No Turn on Red, No U-Turn, Do Not Enter, Emergency Exit, and so on must all be provided in the native languages of every community represented in California, whether the signs use symbols or written language. I hope there is enough room to accommodate them all.
Next, all public schools must be required to offer every course in the native languages of every diverse community. After all, if you cannot educate members of a diverse community in their native tongue, aren’t you effectively creating an illiterate population for Californian?
California, making sure no one is left behind!
@philg
> I would chuck the entire property tax system
LVT is an interesting concept.
The way they build houses these days, maybe we should chuck how they are currently valuated (by the county tax man or the market). Conceptually, the dwellings depreciate whereas the land does not. (My favorite rich person property grift is growing an acre of grapes, and claiming the property is farmland.)
Greenspun riding a bike around home instead of spending summer baking thousands of miles of pavement in a minivan sounds surreal.
lion: summer is over. The Palm Beach County Schools start tomorrow.
Who did you vote for this election?
Anon: As suggested above: Byron Donalds; Ashley Moody; Blaise Ingoglia; Wilton Simpson; Jacob Noble (litigation experience over administrative experience plus the endorsement by the police; we can let San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, and Boston do the revolving door criminal justice systems!).
The election results are rolling in. Donalds, Moody, Ingoglia, Simpson, and Noble won! For once there are some people who agree with me.
While I support limit terms for *all* politicians (and especially for senators and representatives), it is indeed sad day for Florida.
I wonder if DeSantis still has ambitions and will try on federal level. At 47 he can bring non-demented brain into federal politics for a change. One thing Catholic Church did right – limit on pope age.
What is your prognosis for Florida? Is it going to run into problems without DeSantis?
SK: The most plausible scenario seems to be that Rick Scott, 73 years old and a truly useless member of the Senate (has he ever had a good idea? I don’t think so), retires and DeSantis is nominated to replace him. As 1 of 100, I think DeSantis could contribute. I don’t expect DeSantis to be popular nationally because Americans don’t care about competence (Wisconsin is about to elect Francesca Hong; a huge percentage of voters in Maine picked Graham Platner; both of these people weren’t good at everyday life unless you count having sex with every progressive female in Maine as a big success). What Americans seem to want is to be loved by a politician. DeSantis loves the native-born working class and is terrible at pretending to care about anyone else. He doesn’t want to harm the upper-middle-class and the elite, but he figures they’ll take care of themselves. (Note that DeSantis doesn’t hate immigrants, but his love for the native-born working class requires that low-skill immigrants be rejected/deported.)
Can Florida survive without DeSantis? I think the entire U.S. is in trouble now that politicians have discovered the cheat code: tell voters that someone else will pay for everything that they want. Even DeSantis indulged in this recently by supporting homestead property tax exemption (“renters via landlords and out-of-staters with second homes will pay for everything”). Just look at the purported conservatives in the original post. What gets votes is promising people that someone else will pay for their insurance.
(See also https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2026/08/04/the-next-florida-governor-could-be-an-inverse-mamdani-democrat-david-jollys-plan-to-steal-from-renters-and-give-to-property-owners/ (Jolly is nominally a Democrat, but he’s a reactionary by the standards of Michigan, New York, California, and Maskachusetts Democrats!))
> Wisconsin is about to elect Francesca Hong
A communist America is just around the corner, Phil. Resistance is futile. Hong is quite a cutie pie, no? (Unless she does that thing where she bulges her eyes.) Also a single mom in case any of you old divorced guys want to re-up on marriage (a former chef, too, in case you need her to make a sandwich).
I kinda like DeSantis for his efforts on the Stop W.O.K.E. act. I’m a commie, but I’m not woke. Eww.
I never understood property and school taxes. Why are these taxes based house value, should it be based on no. of people living in a house and school taxes should be no. kids(may be school going kids) you have in the house.
ATD: Despite being one of the beneficiaries of school tax, I mostly agree with you! For some reason, there is huge popular support in the U.S., even among the childless, for making the childless work more and consume less in order to subsidize those blessed with children. Even private companies do this (paid maternity/paternity/parental leave for those who are favored with kids and nothing comparable for the childless).
School and property taxes force the old to pay for the young, but social security, medicare, and ACA taxes force the young to pay for the old.
Perhaps people should collect social security based on the taxes paid by their children?
The homestead exemption in Florida reminds me a little of Prop 13 in California which was supported by Reagan and passed under Jerry Brown. These sorts of exemptions sound populist because they react to the retort “If I owe property taxes it means I never truly own my home.”
The problem in California is that Prop 13 becomes the ownership version of rent control. A large cohort of owners, often boomers and unionized workers, watch property taxes fall well below market. As a result, they can’t move, won’t support fiscal responsibility, and zone out the young, leading to people leaving or voting socialist.
The homestead exemption in Florida is different, but someone has to pay for local and city services, and history suggests that spreading those costs as broadly as possible is the best way to build support for limited spending.
Steve: homestead in Florida is indeed quite similar to Prop 13, but it doesn’t apply to commercial buildings or second homes, as Prop 13 does. So you don’t get truly insane situations like a 25-unit apartment building pay less property tax than a nearby recently-purchased (crummy) single-family home.
In terms of labor market flexibility and just enabling people to live a life free of the hassles of homeownership, I don’t think it makes sense to subsidize homeownership as we do. It makes zero sense to me that someone who rents a 2BR apartment would have to pay triple the property tax paid by the owner of single-family home nearby (let’s assume that both people moved to the neighborhood in 2001 and, of course, the renter is paying property tax indirectly via the landlord).
A neighborhood where everyone owns might be okay if it were easy to have a professional property management firm deal with all of the houses in the neighborhood!
Funny how none of the candidates are willing to say, “Let’s cut property taxes, remove unnecessary regulations, and make government spend less.” Instead, the message is always that businesses need to “give back” or take on additional costs. Then, when those businesses struggle, fail or leave, the government steps in to bail them out or support the public affected by their failure by taking on more debt.
Wouldn’t it make more sense to create an environment where businesses can remain profitable, people can keep more of what they earn, and government learns to live within its means?
We did just fine before the expansion of the modern welfare system in the 1930s and the massive expansion of government assistance programs after the 1960s. After nearly a century, haven’t we learned that money doesn’t grow on trees?
All those years, we have been giving a man a fish to feed him, but not teaching how to fish.
Much easier to outsource tax collection to businesses that need to “give back” than to be the bad guy raising taxes on the little guy. Just grant monopoly status and tax them into oblivion.
The rose-colored glasses version is hopeful. Socialism is a shapeshifter, so it knows the previous version won’t work. This time around it is trying to force private businesses into the government control business and hoping no one will notice it is the same disease.
@Steve, Are you claiming that Democrats are socialists? (in Greta’s voice) How dare you say that!
I, on the other hand, agree with Bill Maher. Watch the full 9-minute video, or jump to 4:20, 6:10, and 7:45 for the key points.