September 9, 2025 • 11 mins
Paul Renner served in the Navy for 20 years, with two combat deployments. He also served in Florida's legislature, two years as Speaker of The Florida House. Now he wants to be Florida's next governor.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome Morning ruminators. Welcome to the Second Hour. If you're
just joining us, thank you. We greatly appreciate you sharing
time with us each and every day. It Show five thousand,
four hundred and forty eight of the Morning Show with
Preston Scott. I'm Preston, he is Jose. It is a
delight to be with you, and we are going to
share some time with Paul Renner. Paul served twenty years
(00:24):
as a naval officer, combat deployments and Operation Desert Storm
and in Afghanistan. Began his legal career as a prosecutor
and eventually went into private practice. Served in the state legislature,
eventually becoming the Speaker of the House. Now he wants
to be governor of the state of Florida. Paul, welcome
back to the program.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
How are you, Preston. Great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Tell me why the decision to go ahead and make
a run for governor.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Well, I'm the father of two young kids, so I
think about the future, what's going to happen in the
next four years, and look, leadership is everything. We've got
a great great men and women in the legislature, but
you've got to have a great leader certainly as governor,
and so you know, whether it's fighting for insurance reform,
where we attacked lawsuit abuse, record tax relief, universal school choice,
(01:17):
tough laws and immigration and election fraud, protecting life, ending DEI,
transgender surgeries on miners, boys and girls, bathrooms. We did
it all in one sixty day session that many consider
the most conservative and consequential in Florida's history. And as
you mentioned in the opening, I've got twenty years in
the military, served in two wars as a prosecutor and
(01:38):
obviously a speaker. And so if you want to find
somebody who can defend what we all love about Florida,
the free State of Florida, but also take on our challenges,
you go to somebody with leadership experience and who's delivered results.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
You obviously know as a military guy, especially the lay
of the land. It's what you, guys, do you figure
out what you're facing. You're facing a guy endorsed by
the curring sitting President Donald Trump in Byron Donald's how
do you overcome that?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, I think it's three things that people are going
to look at. Who do you trust, Who's got the
leadership experience to serve as governor of the third largest
state in the country, and who's delivered results time and
time again. And I listed some of those, I didn't
list all of them. You know, we also protected kids
on social media from online pornography. And you know, I
(02:29):
can think of three cases where people just said, you
can't do these big, bold reforms. Whether it was cutting
our insurance rates that were out of control, and we
took on litigation abuse. They said, you'll never beat the
special interest and we did it, and we see homeowners
starting to stabilize. Auto insurance is actually down. Nothing is
down in the entire country, but it's down in Florida
because we did that with courage. And same with universal
(02:52):
school choice. Even the advocates said, you'll never get to
a point where every single parent, every single student has
the right to choose the school that best fits their needs.
We did it. Same with social media. You'll never take
on big tech, You'll never get past the First Amendment.
We got a great victory through the Tennessee case at
the Supreme Court where now that protection for kids eight
(03:12):
year olds that are getting on early hardcore pornography online
will be protected. Same with social media, which is still
being litigated people said you're not going to be able
to do it, and we did it.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
What didn't get done? Paul? I mean, look, everybody's got
a laundry list of things they want to do. You've
listed a lot of things that were successfully accomplished, but
there are always things that you didn't get to that
the timing wasn't right. What's on the top of that
list of things that didn't get.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Done well, I would say affordability, cost of living, and
we did a lot, you know, I mentioned record tax relief,
what we did on litigation abuse, to try to rein
in insurance costs, as well as helping parents with the
cost of education through the Universal School Scholarship. It's still
not enough. We still need to do more. So we
need to rein in property taxes substantially reduce those taxes.
(04:05):
We need to do something I believe for people that
are on fixed income later in their life they've retired,
they've got a nest egg protecting them from further increases
in property taxes. We need to continue to press forward
on insurance through home hardening programs that really do save
a lot and you can get credits through the state
and through your insurer. By hardening your home with windows
(04:26):
and roof tie downs, and the state will give up
to ten thousand dollars in matching funds for that. I
want to see that program expanded. These kinds of things
will help reduce the cost of living, because people are
really struggling with the cost of living, so we need
to make Florida affordable again. I began that as speaker,
but that work's not yet done. And I know that
I can do it because I've prove and I've done
(04:47):
it on those instances I mentioned.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Back with Paul Renner, candidate for governor here in the
state of Florida. I would imagine we'll have a few
visits over the coming year or so. Paul, you brought
up the revenue issue, and look, I took some pretty
severe sides on this. I felt like your successor was
(05:13):
way too adversarial with the governor's office. I have no
idea why Danny was trying to score political points for
the opposing side. I don't understand any of it. But
let's just weigh in on the substantive issue of property
tax versus lowering the sales tax. Your thoughts on the
(05:33):
tax burden on Floridians.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well, with a sales tax, if I don't want to
pay it, I just don't. You know, I choose to
buy fewer things with property tax. If I get sick
and lose my job, no matter what happens to me,
I have to pay every dollar of that property tax.
And so you can even pay off your home and
you're still paying property tax. And so it is from
just a moral justice standpoint, it's a tough tax for people.
(05:58):
This is about their home, the place they live. We
all deserve to try to reach the American dream and
have home ownership, and so I think it's really important.
And you know, our property taxes have doubled, have grown
rather faster than the national average buy a factor of two,
so almost fifty percent since twenty nineteen. So there's got
to be substantial relief, whether that is you know where
(06:21):
that goes. We have to hit sixty percent, so as
most people on your show will know, we have to
get in the constitution. That means you need Democrats and
independence on board. The Democrat Party will come out against
any tax relief. The League of Cities will come out
against any tax relief. They're in Tallahassee, they'll oppose it.
They'll say your garbage won't be picked up at least
won't come when you call nine to one one. So
you've got to hit a sweet spot, and I don't
(06:42):
know that. You know. Look, i'd love to eliminate property
taxes altogether, but I do believe we can get to
sixty percent through a substantial reduction, maybe not an elimination,
but I look forward to see what the Governor rolls out,
what the House and Senate come to, and if they
can come to agreement, we've got to get something done.
That's what That's what I would say, and I'll fight
for it.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I'm going to rely on what I know about you
in the few times we've visited over the years, Paul,
to address an issue that I'm going to be real
transparent with you. I've been a Republican since nineteen seventy
eight when I could register to vote. I went independent
for a while because I felt like the party left me.
I joined the party again. But I'm now at a
(07:24):
point where, for the first time in twenty three years
of doing this show, I didn't have a state lawmaker
come on the show this last year because I insisted
that one of the topics we would talk about while
we talked about anything they wanted to discuss were the
loopholes on Everify inside Florida. Florida Republicans won't touch the issue, Paul.
(07:44):
They don't want anything to do with it. And I'll
be real, I'm going to be transparent here. It affected
me personally. I had an illegal immigrant broke into my
daughter's home with a knife, and thankfully my daughter and
her three children were not harmed. But the fact is
it was an illegal immigrant being employed in this state.
And I keep seeing stories over and over. I see
(08:07):
the Attorney General wants to sue or subpoena the company
in California that hired the truck driver in that fatal
crash on the turnpike. Right, what are we going to
do about you Verify?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, we can't have a process. And then we wink
in the other direction and let people in and you know,
these things all come through compromise. But that's not going
far enough. And you know Representive Kay and Michael who
lost her son in a crash with an illegal immigrant,
and so this is a real, real thing and you've
experienced it, and we saw it on the interstate here recently,
(08:43):
we have let the border become a total crisis. And
so I think what the Governor's doing, and I would
follow in that is appropriate to have these detention facilities
set up. You know, people ask, well, isn't it doesn't
it cost too much? What about the cost of free education,
free health care, and all gang violence, the crime that
was committed against your daughter, you know, all of these
(09:04):
things have a huge cost of society. And so we
have to stop the illegal immigration flow at the border.
I think the President's really begun to do that successfully.
And then we have to get these guys out of
the country. Anybody that's got a criminal passion have been
out you know, years, they should never have been let in.
And so we don't have nearly enough enforcement. And obviously
(09:26):
the President's only been in for six months. But I'll
be a great partner on immigration. I'm a former prosecutor.
I believe in the rule of law. You got to
you've got to do it the right way, and we're
not going to let certainly not going to let criminals
stay in our country. And so we've got to, you know,
continue to use our local police support them, so they
can support the effort because there's not enough bodies out
(09:47):
there to deal with the millions and millions of illegals
that are in the country right now.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
But Paul, that doesn't close the loopholes that are in
the law. The everify law only applies to businesses with
twenty five or more. Businesses in the big trades, hospitality,
they are they're forming LLCs with less than that, so
they can go with the E they go with the
I nine thing. And then and then the second loophole
is it doesn't the everify as it is in Florida
(10:12):
right now, doesn't require an employer to check anybody that
was hired prior to the implementation of e verify. They've
grandfathered in a bunch of illegal workers. And these are
the people that have been in this country for you know,
the guy who broke into my daughter's home has been
in the country since for eight years, so he would
never be checked. This this is what I'm talking about.
(10:34):
We're not addressing it because of a lot of money is
going to Florida lawmakers from big agriculture and the trades.
And this is where the party is losing. They're losing
credibility because they want they'll talk tough on immigration, but
they won't deal with the employers of it.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I'll close it. I'll tell you right now on your show,
I'll close it. And if you look at my record,
whether it's Enterprise Florida, corporate welfare, a lot of big
donors love that that program. I shout down. I was
Doze before Doze was cool. If you look at donors
supporting the guy that they tried to push on University
of Florida, I opposed it, lost relationships there. I'll always
do things on principle, and so I'm happy to say
(11:12):
on your show, we'll close it. We'll get it where
it needs to be. That I didn't even realize that
was happening, So that's a problem. That's a problem for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Paul, You're welcome back anytime you like in this campaign,
and we'll chat about the issues. And I appreciate your
time and of course always appreciate your service to our country.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Thank you, Preston. Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Thank you. Paul Renner with us this morning here on
the Morning Show with Preston Scott
Welcome Morning ruminators. Welcome to the Second Hour. If you're
just joining us, thank you. We greatly appreciate you sharing
time with us each and every day. It Show five thousand,
four hundred and forty eight of the Morning Show with
Preston Scott. I'm Preston, he is Jose. It is a
delight to be with you, and we are going to
share some time with Paul Renner. Paul served twenty years
(00:24):
as a naval officer, combat deployments and Operation Desert Storm
and in Afghanistan. Began his legal career as a prosecutor
and eventually went into private practice. Served in the state legislature,
eventually becoming the Speaker of the House. Now he wants
to be governor of the state of Florida. Paul, welcome
back to the program.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
How are you, Preston. Great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Tell me why the decision to go ahead and make
a run for governor.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Well, I'm the father of two young kids, so I
think about the future, what's going to happen in the
next four years, and look, leadership is everything. We've got
a great great men and women in the legislature, but
you've got to have a great leader certainly as governor,
and so you know, whether it's fighting for insurance reform,
where we attacked lawsuit abuse, record tax relief, universal school choice,
(01:17):
tough laws and immigration and election fraud, protecting life, ending DEI,
transgender surgeries on miners, boys and girls, bathrooms. We did
it all in one sixty day session that many consider
the most conservative and consequential in Florida's history. And as
you mentioned in the opening, I've got twenty years in
the military, served in two wars as a prosecutor and
(01:38):
obviously a speaker. And so if you want to find
somebody who can defend what we all love about Florida,
the free State of Florida, but also take on our challenges,
you go to somebody with leadership experience and who's delivered results.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
You obviously know as a military guy, especially the lay
of the land. It's what you, guys, do you figure
out what you're facing. You're facing a guy endorsed by
the curring sitting President Donald Trump in Byron Donald's how
do you overcome that?
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Well, I think it's three things that people are going
to look at. Who do you trust, Who's got the
leadership experience to serve as governor of the third largest
state in the country, and who's delivered results time and
time again. And I listed some of those, I didn't
list all of them. You know, we also protected kids
on social media from online pornography. And you know, I
(02:29):
can think of three cases where people just said, you
can't do these big, bold reforms. Whether it was cutting
our insurance rates that were out of control, and we
took on litigation abuse. They said, you'll never beat the
special interest and we did it, and we see homeowners
starting to stabilize. Auto insurance is actually down. Nothing is
down in the entire country, but it's down in Florida
because we did that with courage. And same with universal
(02:52):
school choice. Even the advocates said, you'll never get to
a point where every single parent, every single student has
the right to choose the school that best fits their needs.
We did it. Same with social media. You'll never take
on big tech, You'll never get past the First Amendment.
We got a great victory through the Tennessee case at
the Supreme Court where now that protection for kids eight
(03:12):
year olds that are getting on early hardcore pornography online
will be protected. Same with social media, which is still
being litigated people said you're not going to be able
to do it, and we did it.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
What didn't get done? Paul? I mean, look, everybody's got
a laundry list of things they want to do. You've
listed a lot of things that were successfully accomplished, but
there are always things that you didn't get to that
the timing wasn't right. What's on the top of that
list of things that didn't get.
Speaker 2 (03:42):
Done well, I would say affordability, cost of living, and
we did a lot, you know, I mentioned record tax relief,
what we did on litigation abuse, to try to rein
in insurance costs, as well as helping parents with the
cost of education through the Universal School Scholarship. It's still
not enough. We still need to do more. So we
need to rein in property taxes substantially reduce those taxes.
(04:05):
We need to do something I believe for people that
are on fixed income later in their life they've retired,
they've got a nest egg protecting them from further increases
in property taxes. We need to continue to press forward
on insurance through home hardening programs that really do save
a lot and you can get credits through the state
and through your insurer. By hardening your home with windows
(04:26):
and roof tie downs, and the state will give up
to ten thousand dollars in matching funds for that. I
want to see that program expanded. These kinds of things
will help reduce the cost of living, because people are
really struggling with the cost of living, so we need
to make Florida affordable again. I began that as speaker,
but that work's not yet done. And I know that
I can do it because I've prove and I've done
(04:47):
it on those instances I mentioned.
Speaker 1 (04:52):
Back with Paul Renner, candidate for governor here in the
state of Florida. I would imagine we'll have a few
visits over the coming year or so. Paul, you brought
up the revenue issue, and look, I took some pretty
severe sides on this. I felt like your successor was
(05:13):
way too adversarial with the governor's office. I have no
idea why Danny was trying to score political points for
the opposing side. I don't understand any of it. But
let's just weigh in on the substantive issue of property
tax versus lowering the sales tax. Your thoughts on the
(05:33):
tax burden on Floridians.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
Well, with a sales tax, if I don't want to
pay it, I just don't. You know, I choose to
buy fewer things with property tax. If I get sick
and lose my job, no matter what happens to me,
I have to pay every dollar of that property tax.
And so you can even pay off your home and
you're still paying property tax. And so it is from
just a moral justice standpoint, it's a tough tax for people.
(05:58):
This is about their home, the place they live. We
all deserve to try to reach the American dream and
have home ownership, and so I think it's really important.
And you know, our property taxes have doubled, have grown
rather faster than the national average buy a factor of two,
so almost fifty percent since twenty nineteen. So there's got
to be substantial relief, whether that is you know where
(06:21):
that goes. We have to hit sixty percent, so as
most people on your show will know, we have to
get in the constitution. That means you need Democrats and
independence on board. The Democrat Party will come out against
any tax relief. The League of Cities will come out
against any tax relief. They're in Tallahassee, they'll oppose it.
They'll say your garbage won't be picked up at least
won't come when you call nine to one one. So
you've got to hit a sweet spot, and I don't
(06:42):
know that. You know. Look, i'd love to eliminate property
taxes altogether, but I do believe we can get to
sixty percent through a substantial reduction, maybe not an elimination,
but I look forward to see what the Governor rolls out,
what the House and Senate come to, and if they
can come to agreement, we've got to get something done.
That's what That's what I would say, and I'll fight
for it.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
I'm going to rely on what I know about you
in the few times we've visited over the years, Paul,
to address an issue that I'm going to be real
transparent with you. I've been a Republican since nineteen seventy
eight when I could register to vote. I went independent
for a while because I felt like the party left me.
I joined the party again. But I'm now at a
(07:24):
point where, for the first time in twenty three years
of doing this show, I didn't have a state lawmaker
come on the show this last year because I insisted
that one of the topics we would talk about while
we talked about anything they wanted to discuss were the
loopholes on Everify inside Florida. Florida Republicans won't touch the issue, Paul.
(07:44):
They don't want anything to do with it. And I'll
be real, I'm going to be transparent here. It affected
me personally. I had an illegal immigrant broke into my
daughter's home with a knife, and thankfully my daughter and
her three children were not harmed. But the fact is
it was an illegal immigrant being employed in this state.
And I keep seeing stories over and over. I see
(08:07):
the Attorney General wants to sue or subpoena the company
in California that hired the truck driver in that fatal
crash on the turnpike. Right, what are we going to
do about you Verify?
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Yeah, we can't have a process. And then we wink
in the other direction and let people in and you know,
these things all come through compromise. But that's not going
far enough. And you know Representive Kay and Michael who
lost her son in a crash with an illegal immigrant,
and so this is a real, real thing and you've
experienced it, and we saw it on the interstate here recently,
(08:43):
we have let the border become a total crisis. And
so I think what the Governor's doing, and I would
follow in that is appropriate to have these detention facilities
set up. You know, people ask, well, isn't it doesn't
it cost too much? What about the cost of free education,
free health care, and all gang violence, the crime that
was committed against your daughter, you know, all of these
(09:04):
things have a huge cost of society. And so we
have to stop the illegal immigration flow at the border.
I think the President's really begun to do that successfully.
And then we have to get these guys out of
the country. Anybody that's got a criminal passion have been
out you know, years, they should never have been let in.
And so we don't have nearly enough enforcement. And obviously
(09:26):
the President's only been in for six months. But I'll
be a great partner on immigration. I'm a former prosecutor.
I believe in the rule of law. You got to
you've got to do it the right way, and we're
not going to let certainly not going to let criminals
stay in our country. And so we've got to, you know,
continue to use our local police support them, so they
can support the effort because there's not enough bodies out
(09:47):
there to deal with the millions and millions of illegals
that are in the country right now.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
But Paul, that doesn't close the loopholes that are in
the law. The everify law only applies to businesses with
twenty five or more. Businesses in the big trades, hospitality,
they are they're forming LLCs with less than that, so
they can go with the E they go with the
I nine thing. And then and then the second loophole
is it doesn't the everify as it is in Florida
(10:12):
right now, doesn't require an employer to check anybody that
was hired prior to the implementation of e verify. They've
grandfathered in a bunch of illegal workers. And these are
the people that have been in this country for you know,
the guy who broke into my daughter's home has been
in the country since for eight years, so he would
never be checked. This this is what I'm talking about.
(10:34):
We're not addressing it because of a lot of money is
going to Florida lawmakers from big agriculture and the trades.
And this is where the party is losing. They're losing
credibility because they want they'll talk tough on immigration, but
they won't deal with the employers of it.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
I'll close it. I'll tell you right now on your show,
I'll close it. And if you look at my record,
whether it's Enterprise Florida, corporate welfare, a lot of big
donors love that that program. I shout down. I was
Doze before Doze was cool. If you look at donors
supporting the guy that they tried to push on University
of Florida, I opposed it, lost relationships there. I'll always
do things on principle, and so I'm happy to say
(11:12):
on your show, we'll close it. We'll get it where
it needs to be. That I didn't even realize that
was happening, So that's a problem. That's a problem for sure.
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Paul, You're welcome back anytime you like in this campaign,
and we'll chat about the issues. And I appreciate your
time and of course always appreciate your service to our country.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Thank you, Preston. Great to be here.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
Thank you. Paul Renner with us this morning here on
the Morning Show with Preston Scott
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