Kevin Steele Enters Race for Florida CFO

Kevin Steele has entered the race for Florida CFO. Florida Politics Publisher Peter Schorsch joins us with details and whether or not Jay Collins will enter the race for governor.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Back now here on the Ryan Gorman Show.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
And let's go to the hotline and bring in the
publisher of Florida Politics, Peter Shore. You can find all
of his work and all of his team's reporting at
Florida politics dot com. And Peter, let's start with a
new candidate in the race for CFO.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Kevin Steele of Tampa, a member of the Florida House,
announced this week. We saw this coming. If you remember,
there was a group of Florida Republican lawmakers at the
White House about four to six weeks ago, and President
Trump's team had encouraged Kevin to get into the race.

(00:37):
Wasn't an endorsement, just hey, we'd be interested.

Speaker 1 (00:41):
In seeing you run.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
And that's because the Trump White House, not necessarily Donald Trump,
but the Trump White House has not forgot that blazing Noia.
The current CFO is a was a major backer of
Ron DeSantis' presidential bid in twenty twenty three.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
So Steele is in.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
He's worth at least nine figures. He's so wealthy that
you know, it fluctuates like like it's like Elon where
it's like one minute, these worth fifty billion or something
like that. He's worth several hundred millions of dollars at
least on paper. The question is will he get the
Trump endorsement, Will Donald Trump get into it. I've been
told that it's one of these chicken and egg situations.

(01:19):
They want to see Trump or excuse me, the Trump
White House wants to see him on the campaign trail.
They want to see him raise a few million dollars
of his own and if he gets there, they will
get involved on his behalf. But if he doesn't, then
they won't have lost anything. So he's got He's got,
I say, maybe two months or so to prove that
he can beat plays at this point. But it's going

(01:40):
to be an interesting GOP primary. You know, this is
going to be one of the rarest you know, everything
else have been kind of settled out with Attorney General.
I think Agriculture Commissioner will be settled out. But now
you you do have a a Goodna trail primary, and
now you're gonna have a CFO primary. So it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
You've got the president endorsing James Utmeyer for turning general.
He was Governor DeSantis's chief of staff and helped run
the presidential campaign that took on Donald Trump yet again.
He's still got Trump's endorsement for Blazing Olia, who early
on was a backer of Governor DeSantis. He's the one

(02:19):
who ends up being potentially targeted by the Trump White
House to get another candidate in there to go up
against him. Yeah, I think it had to do There
was I mean, I know Umeyer was at the forefront
of the DeSantis operation, but there was something about you know,
like kind of like Blaze, like uh, you know, he

(02:41):
was gathering the endorsements from lawmakers behind the scenes. I
remember that he was quarterbacking that effort, and when.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
DeSantis was at his peak, Blaze was right there also,
you know Blaze. You know, DeSantis kind of got involved
in the State Center primary to get Blaze that State
Senate seat. Another wrinkled race is that Kevin Steel's endorsement
came right out of the gate with an endorsement from
Rick Scott. The Senator has been I don't know how

(03:08):
to describe it except kind of lane in the weeds
to go at Blaze, who opposed his pick for Florida
GOP chairman ten years ago, and he is not really
he hasn't done much against Blaze since then. It's not
that they're best friends or anything, but he has waited
until this moment to really get involved in a race
against Blaze. And so Florida politics always interesting and people,

(03:32):
these elephants, they have long memories.

Speaker 2 (03:35):
We're joined by the publisher of Florida Politics, Peter Shorsch.

Speaker 1 (03:38):
Now let's switch to the race for governor.

Speaker 2 (03:42):
I'm watching football over the weekends and I keep seeing
these commercials telling me to call a number to thank
Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins for the tremendous work that he's
doing on the part of the people of Florida. And
when you first watch the commercial, I mean it looks

(04:02):
like it's an announcement that he's running for governor.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
Yeah, that's not what it is. What is going on
with him? Is he getting in or not?

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Well, this is one of the big mysteries. Well, him
getting in is definitely one of the big mysteries in
Florida politics. But I think we know that answer. I
continue to be told that he is jumping into the race.
But so there was a nonprofit Florida Fighters, which makes
me think of like Christopher Walkin, By the way, I
keep thinking about it every time I say it. When
he was on SNL, I think, and he said, who

(04:32):
fight us? And he's like, who fight us? And I
just keep thinking of Florida fight us.

Speaker 2 (04:38):
And so.

Speaker 3 (04:40):
They are a nonprofit, so we don't know who a
CFO organization, so we don't know who's funding them. We
do know what they expended, and it was as of
this weekend, over eight hundred thousand dollars in the Tampa
and Orlando television markets in pro J. Collins non candidate
specific ads, which they are allowed to do at this point.
So somebody is out there supporting J. Collins. That's much

(05:04):
more money than he has raised for his own political committees.
On Monday, Collins had a press conference about an apolitical
or a non campaign event, and he said he it
was a quote mystery to him who was spending money
on it. He's we're not really sure about it. I

(05:24):
will also say one thing that I saw that I
haven't seen reported is that his political committee spent several
hundred thousand dollars on telephone calls last week. I wonder
if there is an effort maybe to boost his polling.
You know, we've seen poll after poll with Collins down
in that I mean literally like at one point two

(05:45):
percent I think was the last number I saw from
a poll from Victory Insights. I wonder as they're trying
to get him at that seven eight nine percent, so
that so he's not as embarrassed when these polling stories
come out.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
It was so interesting because Collins clearly seemed to take
a shot at Congressman Byron Donald's by saying, you know,
you got a lot of these these lawmakers in DC
and their whole deal is just to get on TV
and all of that, not really to pass bills. And
it seemed like a pretty clear shot of Byron Donald's.

(06:20):
Then you had Republican Congressman Greg Stuby. He jumps in
and he says, you mean, like what your boss did,
referring to Governor Ron DeSantis before he was governor, when
he was a congressman, and he kept going on Fox
News to get in Trump's good graces that eventually led
him to get the.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
Nomination and win that race for governor.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
So you've got a real split here, and it's kind
of playing out in the open on social media.

Speaker 3 (06:46):
It is, and I think it is indicative, and I
don't mean to, you know, I feel like you have
to preface every time you talk about Jay Collins with
like a nod tous service that he is such you know,
it was Veterans Day last week, and you know you
have to give that non.

Speaker 1 (07:04):
To a service. But that doesn't mean that people like him.

Speaker 3 (07:07):
And it's not that they don't not like him, but
he is by and large unknown to most of the
people in the most of the elected officials in the process.
Like he was appointed excuse me, handpicked by DeSantis to
run for a state Senate se he only served there
for over a year and a half. So this isn't
somebody with this like you know, great Stupie was in

(07:30):
the House for years. You know, he's got he's popular
down on Southwest Ford. He's got, you know, a political base.
He was strong enough that he was kind of able
to muscle Vern Buchanan out of during the redistricting battle out.

Speaker 1 (07:42):
Of his home territory.

Speaker 3 (07:43):
And I think you're going to see a lot of
that once Jay Collins eventually gets into this race. That
remember all those people went down and adorsed Donald Trump
against Rond DeSantis. There's all these you know, Florida House
members that have endorsed Donald's you know, I reported, you know,
on I think it was Monday or Tuesday that you
know he's got I think like Donald's has got something

(08:05):
like eighty percent or ninety percent of the Republican sheriffs.
The Republican elected official base at this point is clearly
with Donalds, and I just I don't know how much
room there is left for Collins.

Speaker 1 (08:17):
And when he goes out there and he really attacks.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
Byron Donald's not by name, but you know, it was
clear who he was talking about, he better expect to
get hit back by Donald's many political allies. The publisher
of Florida Politics, Peter shoresh with the inside scoop for us.
You can check out his reporting and his team's reporting
on all of this and a whole lot more at
Florida politics dot com. Peter really appreciate it. We'll talk

(08:41):
to you soon, all right. Thanks for having me on, Ryan,