Florida Deserves Better. That’s Why I’m Supporting Scott Jewett.
Written by: Stephen Despin / medium.com
For nearly a decade, I worked inside Republican politics.
I organized communities, recruited volunteers, built coalitions, managed digital campaigns, worked alongside candidates and helped advance policies rooted in individual liberty, fiscal responsibility and limited government. I believed the message because, at its best, that message reflected something both practical and deeply moral: government should respect the dignity of the individual, remain within its constitutional boundaries and never take from working families more than is truly necessary.
I still believe those things.
What I no longer believe is that the Republican Party can be trusted merely because its candidates repeat them during election season.
That is why I am supporting Libertarian candidate Scott Jewett for Governor of Florida.
This is not a decision I reached casually. It is not an angry reaction to a single politician, one bad vote or one disappointing administration. It is the result of years spent watching an increasingly familiar cycle unfold.
Republicans campaign against big government and then expand it.
They condemn reckless spending and then vote for larger budgets.
They promise peace and restraint, then cheer when bombs begin falling.
They warn us about the national debt while approving nearly every politically convenient expense placed before them.
They talk about local control until a local community makes a decision they dislike.
They defend individual liberty when Democrats threaten it, then suddenly discover the virtues of state power when they control the machinery.
Every election, we hear some version of the same promise: Give us one more victory. Give us one more majority. Give us one more governor, senator, representative or president. This time, they assure us, they will finally do what they promised the last time.
After years of watching the gap between the speeches and the governing grow wider, I have reached a simple conclusion:
I am tired of voting for the promise of limited government only to receive a Republican-managed version of big government.
Florida deserves something different.