Jay Collins, Lieutenant Governor of Florida, attributes the state's low crime rates to strict accountability and contrasts this with California's leniency. Drawing on his military service and leadership in Israel, he credits Governor Ron DeSantis for moral fortitude during the pandemic that secured a conservative legislative supermajority. Collins advocates for property tax relief targeting homesteads over corporations, supports law enforcement funding and drone training, and highlights tort reform to stabilize insurance rates. Addressing political shifts from California and New York influxes, he emphasizes resilience through home hardening programs while weighing a potential gubernatorial run driven solely by community needs. [Automatically generated summary]
You know, when the Summer of Love happened and you saw George Floyd and all these horrible things, it didn't happen in Florida because he said, you know what?
You're going to get punished.
You're going to go to jail.
And we're going to hold you accountable when that happens.
Things like holding people accountable when you steal.
You go to California.
If you want to steal $999, it won't even stop you.
I mean, what kind of lunacy is that?
Could you imagine being a business owner thinking that anytime someone walks in, you're going to write off $1,000?
I want to start with just a quick personal story because although we had crossed paths in my few years in Florida once or twice, you actually did something unbelievably powerful and profound and important for my family not too long ago when the Iran-Israel war was going off.
I didn't mention this on air, but my sister and her family and three kids happened to be in Israel and you were leading the team that was getting Floridians out of Israel.
Their only international airport was closed.
It was an unbelievably difficult logistical feat.
And you did an incredible job.
And I speak for my sister and my entire family.
I mean, we're all indebted to you.
So I just want to put that right there.
And maybe you want to discuss some of the logistics around that.
But maybe before we get into that, for people that don't know you outside of Florida, I feel like people are getting to know you here.
You have an incredible backstory, born in Montana, served in the military and paid the price for that.
I thought maybe we could do like maybe a two-minute biography and then we can dive into all of the stuff.
I was born to a 16-year-old kid who had struggles with alcohol and drugs and was adopted by my grandparents.
So when people say somebody can't make a difference, one person can't do it.
Well, my grandma and grandpa made a heck of a difference for me.
They gave me a life.
They gave me a future.
Lord knows where I would have ended up otherwise.
Jumped forward to graduating high school, went to college for a couple of years, decided to join the military.
I said I'd do it for a few years, fell in love with it.
I was in jump school for September 11th, and the whole world changed.
I didn't find out the towers have been hit until literally six or seven hours afterwards.
Wow.
And we knew we were going to be going from a nation at peace to a nation at war.
It was just a matter of when.
So I did a quick deployment to MacDill Air Force Base, saw a bunch of green berets and three letter agencies working together and figured out what I wanted to do when I grew up, volunteered shortly after that and went to selection.
And I've been volunteering for our nation ever since.
I got to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, all over the Middle East, all over Europe, all over South America.
I did get shot and I did do surgery on myself.
It's a great barroom story now.
It was not awesome at the time.
I did get hit by a mortar.
I fell and jacked up my back, blew out some discs, broke some bones, and that eventually led to the loss of my leg.
Well, Dave, I could talk for about three hours on the lessons I learned face first on that one from fast roping and learning that carbon fiber does overheat when it's applied on a rope and literally my toes would break off when I hit the ground or jumped out of an airplane and my leg pulling off my body and flopping around underneath me.
That was really not cool.
It didn't kill me, though.
So it did make me stronger, I guess.
And I learned how to plan around it.
Actually, doing shooting drills was incredibly hard because when your foot doesn't flex and it's basically a brick, your sight moves differently.
So you had to shift your body and accommodate differently.
So the weight distribution was completely different.
I had to relearn all of those tasks.
And again, you had to do it right because we had one standard.
But in the end, there are one-legged Green Berets and people like that deployed all over the planet now.
So we helped shift Army policy and grateful to have had an opportunity to do it.
So I want to spend most of the show talking about what we're doing right here in Florida.
But if we could back up for just a sec, can you talk to people about what I mentioned up top about the program that you were involved in to get Floridians out of war zones?
And I do want to just reiterate like your calming presence that you were taking calls with me and meeting my sister on the ground in the family in the midst of rockets that were falling very close to you and they were hearing all sorts of explosions and everything.
The state of Florida has shown that we want to lead from the front.
And when others weren't stepping up, we were getting calls from moms and dads and families, brothers and uncles and sisters and all over the state and eventually all over the country because their loved ones were in harm's way.
You know, if you had actually queried my friends and family, this was very typical of what I would like to do with my life, what I thought I was going to be doing when I retired and the way I lived in my life for many years.
So running to get Israel and bouncing between Jordan, ducking and diving ballistic missiles was the most normal thing I've probably done the last five years.
But in the end, that's what leadership should look like from our government.
Imagine where those people would have been.
Imagine how you would have felt if Governor DeSantis didn't have the courage and commitment, the conviction to say, yes, go ahead and go.
Make a difference.
Bring our people back.
And by the way, even if they're not Floridians and they're American citizens, bring them back too.
That is leadership.
And being upfront and taking that hard right matters.
So, you know, we deployed forward.
I went from Tampa into Cyprus.
From Cyprus, we chartered a plane into Jordan.
We landed in a little airport there, walked around, found our bearings, got a hotel, and then went from the Queen Alia airport into the Sheikh Hussein border crossing and went backwards through the entire system.
You had to pressure load it to make sure that we had connections, we knew the process, we understood where the gaps, where the risks could be, and we made our way into Israel.
We started reaching out to that first group of people, getting them set up, telling them how the process would work, get buses online, bring them in, set up times, and then bring them back through the reverse way we came in, which was right back through the border crossing, in this case, back over to Queen Alia Airport, and then on to Cyprus, and then back to Tampa Bay, Florida.
And we did that again and again.
We also used boats, which was a very interesting, slow way back to Cyprus to then get on the same aircraft.
But in the end, man, it was just such a privilege to be there and get to lead from the front and be there for so many people.
And, you know, it was odd.
My phone number made its way to, I believe, all 50 states.
Text messages.
But, you know, I thought about what if that were my sister?
What if that were my kids?
Having someone pick up the phone and care about what's going on, that's the difference.
And it's just beautiful that we so consistently do that here in the state of Florida.
And then you guys are able to scale it across the world.
And then you were on the ground there, of course, and DeSantis was in Tampa waiting for people to land again and offering reassurance.
I do want to mention also that my personal friend and friend of the show, Josh Hammer, you helped get him and his wife and his just few month-old baby out with that via that road or that route that you took right there.
So let's talk about Florida because everybody watching this knows I love this state.
I view Florida as the freest state and the freest nation in the world.
And we are doing almost everything right.
So tell me a little bit about how is it that we're getting it right?
How did you and the governor and the people that are doing it right?
And I know we've got some weird stuff happening in the legislature.
Maybe we can talk about that.
But how did Florida really get it right?
Is this all the success that we're seeing now the result of the craziness of COVID?
And because DeSantis got that right, it then pushed a lot of other good stuff forward.
Or was there a lot of good things before that that maybe got strengthened?
So, you know, that's actually a great question, Dave.
And I think it hits on the nuance and the point of delineation here more than anybody else who's asked that question, frankly.
I love the approach.
Governor DeSantis had all the tools.
He had all the talent.
He had the moral compass that pointed the right direction.
Nobody knew COVID was going to happen.
When he got elected, nobody would have thought that COVID would define five years of our lives across this country.
They would change how business is run, that it would destroy our economy in many states.
And that Florida, because we elected the right person who had the moral characteristics, who had the ability to stand alone if necessary, and he did stand alone.
He had people attacking him from all over the planet, all over the country, and he stood alone.
And eventually people built up alongside him.
If Governor DeSantis didn't have that courage, that fortitude, if he didn't have a conviction to stand in what he believes, Florida would have fallen.
We would have been like New York.
And what's the result of that?
Because he's done that.
We have a supermajority in the House, the Senate.
We have passed more conservative language and legislation than any other state.
I call this the conservative proving grounds of America.
And it's very simple.
What's going on now across the country, most of it we've proved here in Florida, whether it was our anti-CCP bills, whether it was common sense things like school choice, standing up for prayer and sports, standing up for parents' rights, all of those things.
Those are American ideals, ideas, principles.
And we stood strong here in Florida.
But here's the key thing: elections have consequences.
We were so close, so incredibly close to that election going awry, both in the primary and in a general.
Well, first off, I think as a conservative, as a Republican and a conservative, we run on certain things.
You know, immigration was one of those.
President Trump in his election had a clear mandate from the American people.
It wasn't Democrats.
It wasn't Republicans and it wasn't independents.
It was the American people across the way that said illegal immigration is a problem and we want you to take care of it.
And that's happening.
No state has stepped forward and led more than the state of Florida.
Our 287G agreements, what we're doing with Alligator Alcatraz, what we're doing with Deportation Depot, and the potential for the panhandle pokey as we grow.
We're taking this seriously.
We're leading from the front because ultimately it's a math problem, it's a safety problem, and the American people have been abundantly clear.
But you know what?
Why aren't other states following that lead?
Imagine where we would be in this problem if other people had the conviction and the courage to lead, even if it's a little bumpy, even if you have to fight activist judges in your own state.
We still win.
We still push forward and we persevere.
Property tax is really one of those things where we can step into next.
You know, the American dream, you know, is an amazing story, right?
Many of us have lived that.
I grew up in a trailer.
And to go from growing up in a trailer without two wooden nickels to rub together to being the lieutenant governor, the 21st in the great state of Florida under Governor Ron DeSantis, man, it reads like a bad Hallmark movie, right?
But what an amazing opportunity and a blessing.
But only in this country and in a state like Florida is that truly possible.
So property tax is the American dream.
We want to own our home.
And if you really pay rent and the government can take your home, the fact is you don't own it.
So we can do that and we should do that.
The people across Florida are craving, yearning, demanding property tax relief.
But we've got to use our supermajorities to get this out there.
It's got to go on the ballot.
The people have to vote for this.
And I think what we really want to focus in on are those homesteaded properties.
That's a critical component of it.
At home, not corporations that own two, three, 400 of these things.
Your home, the American dream, your people.
You know, we got to get that right.
And we'll be out of the tip of the spear on that, both myself, the governor, and whoever else wants to get in beside us.
But the fact is this: if you're elected as a Republican, we have an opportunity to land this plane, make a difference, and get it right.
And our people are very clear in this.
They want property tax relief.
They want to have the American dream.
They want the government out of the day-to-day of their home like that.
So, okay, so speaking of the math, then what, without getting too insider baseball here, what is the general pushback you're getting?
Because you mentioned a supermajority.
So everything you said there, I'm sure everybody watching this is going, yeah, of course, we don't want to pay property taxes and people shouldn't, in essence, pay a penalty, especially in a state where we have record tourism every year.
So it's not like we don't have tax.
It's not as if we don't have income coming into the state.
And we have a very trim budget.
So it's not like we have a lot of fat.
So what is the pushback that you get when you hear that or when you present that?
We've had so much success for the last six and a half years under Governor DeSantis.
You want to keep that train chugging down the tracks.
Yes, whatever happens in the next eight years for whoever the next governor is, something big, something bold, something crazy will happen.
And they're going to have their opportunity to shine to lead through that thing.
But we want to make sure they have that moral compass.
But let's talk about law enforcement.
We're at an all-time low in terms of crime.
We are happy and blessed to do that.
But how do we get here?
You know, when the Summer of Love happened and you saw George Floyd and all these horrible things, it didn't happen in Florida because he said, you know what?
You're going to get punished.
You're going to go to jail.
And we're going to hold you accountable when that happens.
Things like holding people accountable when you steal.
You go to California, if you want to steal $999, it won't even stop you.
I mean, what kind of lunacy is that?
Could you imagine being a business owner thinking that anytime someone walks in, you're going to write off $1,000?
I think there's ways to further improve how we purchase vehicles, how we purchase arms, how we train our people from a fusion concept, how you can get more deliberate in training them.
As a military man, I always look for opportunities to create horizontal and vertical capabilities to stack those up.
The fact is, everything in your home that touches Wi-Fi is up at risk with cyber being really the next, one of the next major fields of warfare and attack in our communities.
It's frightening.
That's going to happen, drone warfare.
You know, we talked to Josh and so many other people over there.
There were drones flying all over Israel.
The fact is, eventually that's coming here.
We're going to see that.
We have to prepare for that.
And our law enforcement have to be prepared for those things.
But that means you have to train them, fund them, and make sure that they get back to their families.
That's time, tools, training.
But we often forget that our cops, our firefighters, they're moms and dads.
They're daughters and sons.
They have families too.
And we often don't pay enough attention to the people behind the badge and all that they do.
They deserve to have all they need to do their job, but they got to get home to their families.
And in Florida, we're going to continue to fight and lead from the front on that as we always have.
But there'll be something that pops up and we'll prove our worth and our value there as well.
You know, we're a military-friendly state, Dave.
There are 1.5 million veterans.
I want veterans to retire and come to the great state of Florida.
I want them to continue to serve, whether it's an education, whether it's building a business, or it's getting into politics.
That brand, that approach, those can-do attitudes make a difference.
But we're going to have to solve problems with the VA.
We have to draw people in here.
That's why we did our Florida Department of Veterans Affairs and Modernization Act that I ran that allowed us to recruit veterans and their spouses to help them build bridges and build lives right here in the great state of Florida.
We're going to continue to push on those things, building businesses, that American dream as well.
Do you guys in Tallahassee have a special office somewhere where you're able to track the voting habits of the newcomers?
Now, I'm down here where I can tell you the newcomers, and I'm only here three, you know, barely, barely four years now.
The newcomers are the most dread, the ones that come from Cali and New York, all obviously the backdrop of COVID.
But that's always the concern with the OG Floridians.
And I'm very sensitive to that concern.
So when I first got here, I was always walking around with my Florida hat or American shirt flag because I wanted people to know, hey, I'm here for the right reasons.
I'm not here because you tell people you're from Cali and they start freaking out.
Are you guys aware of a good set of problems, which is we've created the conditions for freedom, so everyone's still coming here, but it does present a risk that places like Utah and Montana, where you're from, that in some sense have become a little more blue at times because the blue people flee and then they bring the stupid policies.
Yeah, you know, even for a guy like me, me, who's obviously well-versed in Floridian politics, I didn't realize until the last session how sort of screwy the house with the supermajority could be.
Do you think some of that is also that DeSantis, because this is his last term no matter what, that in essence, he's a lame duck.
So they're just like, ah, let's just see what we could get away with because we don't have to worry about this guy anymore.
And I'm so incredibly proud to be his lieutenant governor because I'll tell you what, if we're going to wear suits and ties every day, we're going to get dressed up.
We better get something done.
I don't sit idly very well.
I kind of have something to do with my hands.
And that, thank God, is serving the people of Florida and getting things done.
So speaking of getting things done, I think one of the major things that people talk about that Florida could do better is figure out what's going on with, you know, we have all these natural disasters.
Obviously, we've had, you know, basically two virtually category five hurricanes hit us in the last three years, Ian and the one last year.
I'm blanking on which one that was.
Helena, thank you.
Yeah, Matt Milton, right?
And obviously there's an insurance problem here in that we are a peninsula.
We have a lot of water around us.
We get hit on the Gulf.
We get hit on the Atlantic.
Is there anything we can do?
Is it the government's responsibility to be facilitating the insurance companies to be making better deals with people?
Or is it just kind of baked in that if you live in an area like this, and it's not just Florida, obviously, that there's a price to pay in some sense?
Yeah, Dave, there's a little bit of all the above.
I think we'll grab E, answer E on this.
It is all of the above.
But here's the fact, right?
Yes, there are things we've done and there are things we can do, but this is where we've got to stay the course.
You know, I've heard the first lady call Governor DeSantis a steely-eyed missile man, right?
That's what we're talking about.
It is not easy to go look at people in the community when their homes have been destroyed.
Insurance prices are going up and say, we have to be patient.
The tort reform work that we did is working.
Insurance companies are coming back.
Rates are stabilizing.
I know it's hard.
And we've done all we can to help as a state and lead from the front with many programs to either elevate your home, to refurbish your home, to ruggedize your home and make it more resilient.
But in the end, tort reform, we had 77% of the litigated claims and only 7% of the actual claims in the country.
So we have to end with the obvious question, which we already hinted at, which is that it seems to me you are lined up quite well to keep the DeSantis legacy alive.