Where I Stand

Marriage equality is settled law, and I will oppose any attempt, legislative, statutory, or procedural, to erode it. I support repealing Florida's unenforced, unconstitutional "Defense of Marriage Act" language still sitting on the books. My Fruit of the Tree Act and Til Death Do Us Part Act use explicitly gender-neutral language throughout, ensuring every committed couple has full legal recognition, inheritance rights, healthcare surrogate access, and family protection under Florida law.

Discrimination in housing, employment, and public accommodations has no place in Florida law. I support codifying Bostock's protections explicitly in Florida statute. I oppose any "license to discriminate" legislation, a pharmacist who refuses to fill a prescription, a landlord who refuses to rent, a hospital that refuses to treat: that is not the exercise of faith, that is discrimination, and I will oppose any legal shield for it.

The only question in any adoption proceeding is what serves the best interest of the child, sexual orientation and gender identity are not relevant to that determination. I oppose any attempt to reinstate bans on LGBTQ+ adoption, and I oppose letting publicly funded agencies use taxpayer money to discriminate against LGBTQ+ couples and foster parents.

So-called "conversion therapy" is not therapy, it is psychological harm inflicted on children, repudiated by every mainstream medical and mental health association. I support a full legislative ban on the practice for minors.

HB 1557 and HB 1069 were not about protecting children, they were about erasing them. My Nothing But The Truth Act repeals the Don't Say LGBTQ statute, dismantles the book-ban machinery that has been weaponized almost exclusively against books by and about Black, Indigenous, Latino, and LGBTQ+ people, and mandates a K-12 curriculum that includes LGBTQ+ history and families. I support full repeal of the "bathroom bill," which accomplishes nothing except the humiliation and endangerment of transgender Floridians, including children.

I believe children deserve protection from permanent medical decisions until they are old enough to make those choices as adults. I strongly oppose government overreach into family medical decisions generally, and I support age-appropriate care and mental health support for transgender youth, but I am not prepared to support full repeal of Florida's current restrictions on gender-affirming care for minors as written. I recognize this places me outside consensus on this specific question with some LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, and I would rather tell you that directly than give an answer I don't hold. For transgender adults, I fully support equal access to medically necessary care without discrimination.

My Reckoning Act includes a bias-motivated intimidation statute that explicitly covers crimes motivated by gender identity and sexual orientation. Separately, I support modernizing Florida's HIV-specific criminal laws, laws that criminalize people living with HIV for up to 30 years, even when undetectable and unable to transmit, are stigma codified into statute, not public health policy.

My Right to Bear Arms Act is grounded in the Heller framework, which explicitly affirmed that the Second Amendment is not unlimited and that "dangerous and unusual weapons" can be regulated. This does not touch a single law-abiding gun owner's ability to legally purchase, register, or carry a firearm. It closes the gaps that let firearms reach people who have already shown they're a danger.

A Florida law enforcement officer completes 80 hours of firearms training before certification. A concealed weapon license applicant is currently required only to be observed firing a single round, one time. I support raising that to a real 10-hour standard, 8 hours of classroom instruction on use-of-force law, de-escalation, and safe storage, plus a minimum 2-hour live-fire proficiency component.

I support universal background checks on all firearm purchases, they are not an infringement, they are the floor. I support a confidential, law-enforcement-only firearm registry integrated into FCIC, so an officer running a license knows what they might be walking into before they're walking into it. And I support closing the private-sale loophole with a matched buyer-seller filing: if a registered firearm turns up at a crime scene and the owner never reported it lost or stolen, they're accountable.

I support a ban on military-style assault weapons and large-capacity magazines. Forty-nine people were murdered with an assault rifle at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, that is exactly the kind of "dangerous and unusual" weapon Heller contemplated regulating. I oppose permitless carry: removing background screening and training requirements for concealed carry does not make communities safer, it removes the last checkpoints we have.

I support red flag laws with real due process protections, including expanding who can petition for a Risk Protection Order beyond law enforcement alone to family members and treating mental health professionals. I support mandatory firearm surrender within 24 hours of a final domestic violence injunction.

I spent years as a Florida Highway Patrol trooper. In my entire career, I pulled my weapon exactly one time. My focus is treating the decision to draw a firearm as the serious, last-resort decision it should be, for every responsible Floridian who carries one.

I nearly died in childbirth. Twice. With my last child, I hemorrhaged so severely that I lost my uterus saving my life. Pregnancy and childbirth were never a policy debate for me. They were three separate moments where the outcome could have gone the other way. My book walks through that last birth and everything that came after it, because people deserve the unsanitized truth about what pregnancy can actually cost a woman's body. When I talk about reproductive healthcare, medical necessity exceptions, and a state that mandates birth without accounting for what birth can actually do to the person giving it, I'm speaking from a hospital bed I occupied three times.

My Families First Act includes the Florida Reproductive Rights Restoration Act, which repeals Florida's 6-week ban and replaces it with a 16-week limit for elective abortion, with zero gestational limits for medically necessary abortions, cases of rape or incest, and fetal conditions incompatible with survival outside the womb. I will oppose any further restriction on abortion access and fight to restore the rights that have already been taken.

Reproductive autonomy is rooted in the same constitutional principle as LGBTQ+ rights and every other intimate decision this platform defends: the government has no place making the most personal decisions of your life. You cannot tell a woman she must carry a pregnancy to term and then tell her she's on her own the moment that child enters the world. That's pro-birth, not pro-life, and there's a difference.

Black women in Florida die from pregnancy-related causes at three times the rate of white women. That's not a medical mystery, it's implicit bias in clinical settings, inadequate postpartum follow-up, and economic barriers to care. The Families First Act mandates no-cost contraception coverage, extends postpartum Medicaid from 60 days to a full 12 months, requires implicit bias training for obstetric providers as a licensure renewal requirement, funds a Community Doula Program with Medicaid reimbursement in every county, and creates a Maternal Mortality Review Committee with subpoena power and binding public annual reports.

I support protecting providers who act in good-faith reliance on the medical standard of care from civil liability, professional discipline, and criminal prosecution, and I support barring the Department of Health from disciplining providers for referring patients to lawful reproductive healthcare outside Florida.

Florida's Amendment 4 passed in 2018 with 64% of the vote. The legislature gutted it by requiring payment of all fines and fees first, a modern poll tax. I support automatic restoration upon completion of sentence, with no financial conditions attached, outstanding fees converted to a civil payment schedule, and notification of restored rights within 30 days of release.

I support full repeal of mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses and restoration of full judicial discretion, judges must be able to sentence the actual individual in front of them, not a mandatory floor that ignores every relevant fact. I support ending qualified immunity for state civil rights claims. Accountability is pro-community and pro-officer, because officers who work in communities that trust them are safer.

Every returning citizen deserves a mandatory reentry plan developed 90 days before release, state-issued ID and documentation at the point of release, ban-the-box protections for employers of 15 or more, and automatic expungement for first-time nonviolent misdemeanors after 5 conviction-free years.

In 2021, 45% of Florida school-aged youth who experienced arrest were Black. That is a policy outcome, not a coincidence. I support threat assessment teams in every school district before any law enforcement referral except immediate physical danger, prohibiting out-of-school suspension for K-3 students, replacing expulsion for nonviolent offenses with alternative placement, mental health counselor ratios of 1:250 (Florida currently averages 1:450), and prohibiting arrests for conduct that would be a misdemeanor outside school.

Climate change is scientifically documented and represents a direct threat to Florida's public safety, economy, coastlines, water supply, and public health. I support repealing the statutory prohibition on using "climate change" in state government communications and planning, government agencies responsible for flood planning and emergency management can't do their jobs if they're legally barred from naming the phenomenon they're planning for.

Florida families pay some of the highest electric bills in the country in the state with the most sunshine. My Power to the People Act locks full retail-rate net metering into statute so no commission rule change can gut it, requires solar canopies with battery storage on big commercial lots, mandates utility-owned solar with savings returned to ratepayers, and funds a Homegrown Power Grant Program prioritizing income-qualified families and storm-hardened schools.

The Live Local Act as currently structured prioritizes developer prerogatives over community needs and undermines local zoning in ways that accelerate sprawl. I support targeted amendments that restore local planning authority, require affordability thresholds tied to Area Median Income, and stop developers from passing impact fees directly onto homebuyers and ratepayers.

Flooding risk in Jacksonville falls disproportionately on historically redlined communities, the same neighborhoods denied investment for decades. My Reclaim and Restore Act requires municipalities to publicly release disaggregated flood models and bring stormwater infrastructure in historically redlined communities up to state standards. Climate adaptation cannot be race-neutral because climate risk is not race-neutral.

Insurance redlining leaves the communities least able to absorb disaster loss as the communities least protected. I support prohibiting discriminatory underwriting, requiring transparent rate-setting with public data on coverage denials by geography, and establishing a state backstop to ensure coverage is available where the private market has abandoned it. I also support restoring the funding and enforcement authority stripped from the DEP, FWC, and water management districts, and repealing anti-environmental preemption laws like SB 180 in favor of statewide minimum protections.

I don't support a blanket ban on AI hyperscale data centers, but I do support mandatory environmental impact assessment, minimum clean energy requirements, and enforceable water-use standards before any siting approval, these facilities can't be permitted without accounting for their real cost to Florida's grid and water supply. On phosphate mining, I support restoring comprehensive regulatory oversight of radioactive waste disposal and the risk it poses to the Floridan Aquifer.

My Nothing But The Truth Act sets new salary floors: $65,000 to start for certified teachers, $75,000 at 10+ years, $85,000 at 20+ years, and a $25/hour minimum for paraprofessionals and classroom aides with a pathway to $30+. Salaries are tied to the Consumer Price Index annually so they can never erode below inflation again.

My Reckoning Act fully repeals the Stop WOKE Act (HB 7), restoring workplace discrimination protections without content restrictions on training, and removing restrictions on classroom instruction related to race, sex, and identity. Feeling something when you learn about a documented historical injustice is evidence of empathy, not indoctrination. The purpose of teaching history honestly isn't to make students feel good about the past, it's to make sure they're honest about it, so they don't repeat it.

Florida has led the nation in book bans for three consecutive years. The machinery pulling books from shelves has been weaponized almost exclusively against books by and about Black, Indigenous, Latino, and LGBTQ+ people. I support dismantling that machinery and restoring books that have already cleared an established professional review process.

Every district needs threat assessment teams before any law enforcement referral except immediate physical danger, mental health counselor ratios of 1:250 (Florida currently averages 1:450), restorative justice programs, and a prohibition on arresting students for conduct that would be a misdemeanor outside school.

I support state-funded student loan relief for Florida public university graduates, with enhanced relief for graduates who commit to public service in underserved communities for at least five years, along with expanded dual enrollment, tuition freezes at state institutions, and state-level Pell Grant supplementation.

Over 800,000 low-income Floridians are in the coverage gap, they earn too much for Medicaid but too little for marketplace subsidies. Florida has refused federal Medicaid expansion dollars for over a decade while those same dollars funded expansion in other states. That's ideological cruelty at the expense of working people, not fiscal conservatism. I support full Medicaid expansion without condition.

My Families First Act extends postpartum Medicaid coverage from 60 days to a full 12 months, mandates no-cost depression screening at 2, 6, and 12 weeks, requires implicit bias training for obstetric providers as a licensure renewal requirement, and funds a Community Doula Program with Medicaid reimbursement in every Florida county, prioritizing the underserved communities carrying the sharpest disparities.

I support price transparency requirements, a prohibition on surprise billing, and state-level negotiation mechanisms for prescription drug costs. The long-term goal is a universal coverage system, because a Florida where your ability to see a doctor depends on your employer or your income is a Florida that is choosing to let people die preventably.

Florida's HIV-specific criminal laws, which can criminalize a person for up to 30 years even when they practice safe sex and are undetectable and unable to transmit, are stigma codified into statute. They discourage testing and treatment, which makes everyone less safe. I support modernizing these laws to reflect the science: undetectable equals untransmittable.