It’s kitchen table issues that matter: What I’m learning on the trail

Image via Don Gaetz campaign.

This is an election cycle in which national issues are sloshing over into local races more than I’ve ever seen in my seven previous campaigns.

From School Board races to County Commission races, candidates seem to be defining themselves on federal policy positions.

But what I’ve learned in eight months running for the Senate is when the ideological hot talk blows over what remains unsettled and unsettling are the “kitchen table issues.” Kitchen table issues are the money matters that keep moms and dads and seniors on fixed incomes and business owners from enjoying their dinners. And, for the most part, voters are fed up with what they’re hearing from both parties.

Cost and availability of housing. Doubling energy prices at the pump and electric meter. Property insurance, if you can get it, if you can afford it. That’s what voters talk about when I see them after church or stop by their workplaces or stay after forums to listen to what they didn’t ask when the lights were on.

Northwest Floridians are delighted to know that I’m with Donald Trump, that I back Gov. Ron DeSantis if he wants to send more illegals to Martha’s Vineyard and that I think Kamala Harris is a socialist welterweight. I do. But what they also want to know is if I realize that Tallahassee owns the “kitchen table” issues and isn’t doing enough to solve them.

A high school teacher drives 40 miles to work because she can’t buy or even rent a house closer to her school. A farmer-businessman whose property hugs the Alabama border as far from salt water as you can get in Florida told me his insurance doubled last year and then doubled again this year though he’s never, ever made a claim. He fully expects to have his policy canceled. A Sharing and Caring volunteer cried when she described the alarming increase in seniors in our middle class neighborhood who can’t pay their power bills if they want to pay for their groceries.

Most people know the Legislature has taken important steps toward more affordable housing (Senate President Kathleen Passidomo’s ‘Live Local’ act). And many realize that laws have been passed to reduce fraudulent insurance claims and overlitigation. Some of those laws have just begun to take effect and others will take years to fully implement. Yes, the Public Service Commission, not the Legislature, sets utility rates. But many people whose doors I knock on can’t play the long game or are much interested in jurisdictional finger-pointing. They have to pay their bills this month. They are dissatisfied with what is.

Perhaps for once I’m listening and learning more than I’m talking.

I know one Senator or even the entire Senate can’t unscramble property insurance, energy costs and housing prices. Some of them can’t be fully remedied until we have way better federal policies and partners. But this campaign is teaching me that those “kitchen table” priorities for my neighbors are my legislative priorities if I win.

Refugees from blue states are still coming. They’re attracted by DeSantis’ success to make us “The Free State of Florida.” They love that decades of Legislatures have kept us “The Low Tax State of Florida.” But in recent years in-migration has slowed as the cost drivers of insurance and housing and energy have pushed back.

For young families trying to build a life here, for business owners struggling with energy costs, for folks on fixed incomes whose mortgages require them to carry insurance they can’t pay for and for people from other states wanting to move here, we must create “The Affordable State of Florida.”

That’s the future we need to create: An Affordable Florida.

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Don Gaetz is former President of the Florida Senate. He’s running to return to the Senate representing District 1. This is his eighth political campaign. He won the first seven.