548: Why Does This Libertarian Think Florida Deserves a More Pro-Liberty Governor than Ron DeSantis?

Brian Nichols  0:03  
focusing on winning arguments. We're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, happy Tuesday there, folks line you're on The Brian Nichols Show. And thank you for joining us for another episode. I am as always, your humble host. And today, you're gonna hear someone make the case that there could be a more pro Liberty candidate and governor in the state of Florida. Oh, what Say it Ain't So blasphemy? No, it's true. And I promise you we actually have said candidate on today's episode. But before we get there, I want to go ahead and give a shout out to today's sponsor. And that is the one and only expat money show Haven or Brian Nichols show.com. Forward slash expat where you can go ahead and not only protect the money you work so hard to earn from ambulance chasing lawyers, nefarious creditors and greedy unjust governments. How I'll tell you how, because we're gonna be working with our good friend, McHale Thorpe who is going to be going through not just helping people like you invest internationally secure second passports and residencies, eliminate your tax bill, and take advantage of offshore structures so you can travel the world freely and never have to worry about money again. But he's also hosting the expat money Summit. It's gonna be five days 30 expert speakers, and if you head over the Brian Nichols show.com, forward slash expat you can grab your free tickets for this event November 7 through November 11. And oh, by the way, there's a pretty important keynote speaker, the one and only former Congressman Ron Paul, he will be joining the expat money Summit. So again, head the Brian Nichols show.com and grab your free tickets today. Alright, folks, so I teased it there at the intro. Yeah, we have a gentleman joining the program today who not only thinks there could be a more pro Liberty candidate and pro Liberty governor in the state of Florida, but he thinks it might be him. Hector Roos welcome The Brian Nichols Show.

Hector Roos  2:08  
Hey, great to be here. Thanks for having me, Brian. Absolutely. Thank you

Brian Nichols  2:13  
for joining us looking forward to this conversation. And for sure want to hear your case, man, because I am coming from Philadelphia pa I moved out to Indiana, settled out here over the past seven months or so. But I lived in Philly for seven years. And I saw the last two of it be a complete MUZZIO something show and it was mostly I say mostly it was almost entirely due to the COVID 19 pandemic and the ensuing response from the local governments. In that case, the city of Philadelphia in the state of Pennsylvania. Hey, Florida is looking pretty good to me. But before we get there, let's go ahead and introduce you to The Brian Nichols Show audience. Hector, who are you and why are you running for governor down in Florida as a big L libertarian?

Hector Roos  2:57  
Well, just to say a few words about myself first. You know, I caught the political bug, you know, about 15 years ago through the Ron Paul campaigns. So yes, I was one of those guys that eventually just joined Libertarian Party really identified with with people who want basically basic freedoms respected and I was sick and tired of just the you know, Democrats on one side saying they wanted to support civil rights and then working against them. And Republicans saying they were for economic rights and property rights and then work against those two, especially on taxes. And for me, I've I've been I've honed my craft, I've helped out over almost 100 campaigns in and around the state of Florida, from statewide to Congress to even the the local city councils and commissions. And frankly, we we libertarians in particular in Florida, it needs to stand up and take a stand of what being a libertarian actually means. Because what we have here is a governor who's basically allowed the, the, the media, the same media that that, you know, promoted Trump for so many years, declare him a libertarian, I don't know if anybody who saw the New Yorker magazine, but certainly he has taken on that role of he is the most libertarian, a governor in America, and it's an absolute falsehood that needs to be corrected. And the best way of doing this challenging, challenging to office, I mean, base, I really call him one of the worst, actually governors on COVID in America. People who forget who may forget that Florida did have a lockdown he did side with Fauci, he did say that people were there were some people who basically were not a who were non essential people, and they couldn't, they couldn't work to feed their families. And frankly, Florida had a, you know, by the beginning of lock downs, or toward the middle, the lock downs, Florida was reporting the fourth biggest losses of small businesses in America. You know, for the most part, we also have a big problem in terms of our taxes, and in terms of our civil rights and in Florida, and that's not going away anytime soon. By simply voting the same way. We've always voted for, you know, to another way of saying is that, you know, I have to say this is that we actually had a state of emergency declared by the governor single handedly for 475 days. So that means that for performance of the five days, the governor was able to write write as many checks as he wanted no oversight, no accountability. And he did that to the tune of billions of dollars, and a lot of other states the same thing. But the difference is, is that, you know, we ended up with a record of record breaking surplus in Florida. But meanwhile, our tax, our taxes across the board went up, went up. So why is it that we have the surplus in Florida, while our taxes are going up in the measures of never before? I mean, these are people, our legislature has been out to lunch for years at this point, and, you know, fill in the vacuum is a governor who's just doing pay to play at this point with whoever whoever steps up to help him and help his career. In moving forward. We know he's going to run for president and to in just another two years of should he win reelection now? And, you know, honestly, we need to set a standard of what being of what Liberty really means and what it looks like on a policy perspective. And, you know, what do I stand for, you know, I stand for actually eliminating the property tax, I think it's horrendous what we have in Florida, we actually for our, we are essentially the in the top 10 of most expensive states live in a court just based on property taxes alone, because our our average income in Florida is actually about 52,000. That means that our with respect to if you live in Philadelphia, or if you live in New York, or California, where you're where you're the salaries are much higher, the they can actually pay for pay for the higher level of taxation they have, they're here in Florida, we do not so people are basically losing their homes, on the fact that we have inflation going up, which is raising the value of our homes, which then increases the net, the net tax the taxes. And then on top of that, we have things in that are required in Florida. Because we're in a we're in a hurricane prone zone. So we have property insurances that also add add considerable amount of money for to have living expenses, that are basically making a lot of people homeless, we saw it, we saw this in the last major recession. And we're seeing it now that people are starting to feel the crunch. It's not just gasoline, it's also cast, the cost of living itself. I could go on. But the reality is that we haven't we have not seen freedom and liberty in Florida with with whichever, whichever political party has been in charge. And we and Floridians are desperate for a change. The voters in the last election actually voted themselves both at a expanding tax property tax exemption, which is minor exemption, and at the same time, a minimum wage. So this is, you know, clearly the voters and they had passed that with over 60% of the vote. This is something that the voters really they really are in a desperate situation. And the the what, regardless of its DeSantis, or just the general malaise of the political establishment, they're just totally out to lunch. And moving on to the next thing. And that's really why I'm running. I think people deserve a choice. I think we haven't had a libertarian on the ballot in Florida, Florida for governor in about in, in a number of years at this point. And last time, you know, we made the difference. And we keep we're one of the few states that actually has libertarian that reaches the ballot, and we beat the spread every time. If if you've know of what happened in Georgia last election cycle, this is something that actually is proven that libertarians can do we we do have the power to essentially, you know, beat the spread and make a difference in terms of who gets elected in November.

Brian Nichols  8:34  
So let me ask you this, then. Let's just say Ron DeSantis get loses right. Let's just say he loses because you played spoiler. How dare you? I know the word spoiler. Right. And all of a sudden you have a Democrat? I think it's is it Nicky Frick fried? Fried?

Hector Roos  8:53  
They're still primary in the Democratic party going up? Okay. Isn't favored? No, it's the former governor of Republicans switch to independent and switch the press Democrat. Yeah, he's also running there. This would be his fifth time running for governor. Fifth time's a charm. Yeah. Right. Yes. So and he feels I mean, he's, he's winning on the money game, whatever that means.

Brian Nichols  9:14  
So let's, let's just go into hypothetical world. Because I live the real life. And I saw what happened when we had blue state governors, blue state or Blue City Mayors, and no, no unchecked power whatsoever with COVID and it was ramped up to 11. I'm gonna be going and visiting some people soon in the next couple of weeks. I know it's gonna be the exact same as I left it back in January. Still insane and crazy. So looking at Florida, I mean, objectively speaking, and maybe it's me trying to look to beyond libertarian, Big L success and more towards we're trying to build trust with a voter base If we play spoiler, and we ended up putting someone who is absolutely less pro liberty than Ron DeSantis in an office, that it would be a net negative, not just to the state of Florida, but I would say also to the perception of libertarians. Do you hear my point there?

Hector Roos  10:18  
Sure. Okay. All right. Just to respond to that. You want to point out that Republicans, generally speaking, have a very bad track record on COVID. Like the Democrats, it doesn't matter if there were, if there was a Democrat governor or republican governor. I mean, if I recall correctly, Pennsylvania has a majority, Republican legislature. You know, it's one of these many states that do with the Democrat as governor, you correct me that the I wasn't I

Brian Nichols  10:45  
will say, though they did. They did their part because they did strip wolf of his his executive mandates, Executive Order overreach. And that was a big deal, because he was going to be pushing a lot of the mandates further, I know, in particular to like a lot of transit stuff, and then, you know, specifics to vaccination stuff. So, I mean, I guess that's a good thing, though. Right?

Hector Roos  11:06  
Right. So what happens in Florida is especially concerning where you have Republican legislative dominated legislature, the they have a supermajority in the legislature in Florida. And the reality is, because there's a Republican governor, they will in place, they're in Florida, they will not check his policy superpowers. And he gave himself superpowers in Florida and suddenly five days and continues to exercise, the government inlet, like it's still, like he still has it. And what I mean by that they're real. They're real world consequences of this, not just on the tax policy set or the property tax, you know, Insanity, it's happening, but react realistically, even on COVID. I mean, this is this is a government that basically had a two tier system on COVID response, there were some states, some counties based on the on the governor, Governor DeSantis, his actual emergency declaration, they all used his declaration to basically allow the counties to have freedom that everybody liked, and saw and on the other side, mandates, both masks and vaccines and vaccine mandates, which in some cases worse than worse than in New York City. Because, you know, you had to if you wanted to be go to a public hospital, you are required to be vaccinated, even even if you're unconscious, in order to actually receive you, they'd still vaccinate, even if you didn't want any, if you wanted to leave the hospital, you still had to, you literally had to get a court order to get get a judge to order order the hospital that you go, even if you're hot that you know, your doctor, prescribing doctor, typical doctor will take care of you. I mean, this is this was the insanity that was happening in Florida and people people died more of these issues of being, you know, what, what people said about the guy in New York, of, you know, nursing home deaths that were just irresponsible or unnecessary, to to be healthy people just be being treated with with, with basically products that still will do cause them harm. I mean, at the end of the day, we're just seeing a, you know, we have to look back and see what is what is our actual measure of success, and a libertarian running for for running running for governor, in my case, right or any pretty much any case, there's two reasons why anybody runs for office generally, one is obvious, obviously, to win. And the other one is to build right to build the case, make the case and build, build the movement. I totally perceive this as a as a movement building exercise, although we I'm in the same situation as like a Jesse Ventura, where I only have to win by a plurality vote. So technically, I only need 33% plus one, in order to beat the Democrat and the Republicans. So that is, that's where we're at. And we really need to call called the question that either party was good on any individual rights and liberties at this point, and that they are simply all grabbing as much power as they can. And there's no check whatsoever, whether it's from the legislature or within from the opposition Democrats, because, you know, they pretty much agree. All you hear out of Florida is what some type of canceled culture or some woke right wing or left wing woke ism. That's all you have out of Florida, nothing about the reality of what people need or asking or demanding. There's nothing about their quality of life. And at the end of the day, I think back to the old 9092 election, and rosboroughs great quote of it's the economy stupid, right? People really really want people people are desperate in Florida and people are desperate in a lot of places. And what the leadership we have in place now is not cutting it. So let's talk about

Brian Nichols  14:41  
Now granted, right a lot of my my pushback is tactical, right? I mean, at the end of the day, I am not I am I'm going to be helping a lot of big L stuff coming soon to be announced so we'll keep that below deck for now. But in the meantime you know I'm definitely empathize with big All candidates I've had many big L candidates on and I guess my approach has been trying to do more from a local level building trust through getting more people elected in that local level, and then using that as a launching off point to go to higher offices, whether it's assembly State Senate, you know, and then to the governorship. Right, that that I would say, would be a more effective pathway. Now, I think we're getting some success across the board. In, you know, just looking at we've had a great number of libertarians actually elected to office at a local and state level here over the past few years. So let's keep that up. And I would absolutely encourage you guys in Florida, please keep that up as well. But let's focus back towards why you're also during the show, there's a talk about as you were hinting at the real issues impacting Floridians, and let's focus on that. Because I mean, hey, I'm coming again, from Philadelphia, PA. And now I'm living in Indiana. I'm feeling good, now we're getting out of that blue insanity. But all I've looked at Florida has been a COVID, a COVID. Bastion, a place to get away from the insanity. That's at least what it's looked like, from my perspective. So I've only had good things to think about for you guys. So let's talk about I guess some of the negatives, the things that are actually impacting Floridians right now. And what you're going to be bringing as libertarians solutions to help remedy those problems.

Hector Roos  16:14  
Yeah, it's a great point. Like I said, the cost of living is is probably the biggest issue in Florida as it is, you know, we have state monopolies on things like insurance, electricity, education, of course. I mean, you know, we all we get our, our political climate is very one sided, it doesn't matter who's you know, what the right wing talking points and left wing talking points are, they're all talking about tweaking this or changing this or wanting to confront some culture issues as your but you know, the reality is that libertarians have solutions, you know, we do we don't want to tweak tax rates, we want to end property taxes, you know, we don't want to, you know, make, we don't want to simply give more people options for people in the market, we want to eliminate monopolies where whenever possible, we don't want to, you know, we have Floridians basically voted for a constitutional referendum that that gave rights back to people who are convicted of felonies in the past a lot. And we know that because the drug war, that there was a, there have been a lot of felonies of people that were convicted of felonies that had nothing to do with violence, and nothing to do with, with even property crimes, just mostly a lot of it was possession of those systems, we have basically a criminal justice system as a result, that only works for those who can afford the expensive lawyers and, and we we are a party that supports basically giving giving a clean slates back to those convicted of victimless and nonviolent crimes, you know, we are about about the solutions, you know, when we talk about, you know, we are the only party that actually confronting inflation, not by spending more of our own money that needs that, that's based on debt, but really talking about things like cryptocurrencies, like, you know, establishing a Bitcoin standard in Florida, that people can actually start transacting in and legally and legally, you know, to start remitting payments to the state based on on that, that cryptocurrency, and this is the future, honestly, we are looking libertarians are always up here stand looking forward and looking to the future. In a very positive direction. We know that we have a crumbling monetary system in the United States, it touches everything because everything's denominated in US dollars, even even our time or employment is, is denominated in US dollars. And once you start getting away from that standard, and able to transact and transparency with money that's transparent that we can see how that's not manipulated, if behind closed doors, we will begin to enjoy more freedoms and more productivity and certainly more wealth creation than ever before. And I think, you know, I say that as part of, you know, running for governor of Florida, because we we're at a point right now that this has become such a an overwhelming issue for everyone, that the states now have to step up. They have to step up in a lot of these issues. We can't rely on the federal government anymore. You know, especially on things like insurance, property insurance is a big issue. Flood insurance is another in Philadelphia, you know, obviously is is neck is on the coast or on water. And I'm sure there's these every community that's on the water faces these issues and these discussions. We have a an antiquated system of of statement flawed, particularly I'm sure this is true everywhere, everywhere else. So we have an antiquated system of a building code that is set to basically one size fits all. We have everything from coastlines to islands to to you know, not mountainous, but we have hilly areas in Florida. I mean, the idea is that we actually have to push the envelope of what is acceptable dialogue, political dialogue in this in the state and in this country. We definitely serve that that purpose, and we have to make people upset that the politicians are simply ignoring the issues even on a conservative basis. Just even basically say, oh, we'll fix it, we'll tweak it. They're not even doing that anymore at this point. So we have to go from from from abandon the idea of tweaking to go all the way and say just something new. And that's what that's what we are we represent the new ideas, and that people are people matter. Because that's what that's what our politicians are communicating to us, especially since since the pandemic, that, you know, they think that people are not essential.

Brian Nichols  20:29  
Yeah, I remember sitting there and listening to that. It was Tom Wolfe saying, Yeah, we're gonna have people who are essential and non essential workers. And that kind of freaked me out. And I guess, I didn't really think about the fact that yeah, that was also a conversation down in Florida as well. So I guess context is important. But I would also remind folks, too, that the context of folks who were in those blue cities are hard to forget, right. Like, I mean, I know not only did it really ruined a lot of businesses, it ruined a lot of relationships, friendships, it's, it's been incredibly painful to see how the relates a hive mind, and how quickly it consumed a city like Philadelphia, and you see it all across the United States, especially in these very blue areas. And it was, it was very disappointing to see that take place, especially when you know, you yourself are experiencing, I say that, you know, raising my hand here, you know, friendships that you had for decades all sudden, just like completely changed because of how they looked at the issue. So I guess getting out and going to an area where I'm more surrounded the people who are more like minded and actually share some values and morals and not just beyond shared experiences, but actually shared goals. It's been nice. And I guess to your point being in Florida, is that you're looking for that too, but it's just been the different hive mind. And I think that's important for us to always get out of our bubbles to talk to your average person to make sure we're actually what's the expression touch grass, go talk to people don't don't think of what you're seeing online as real life all the time. Give yourself the opportunity to have your mind change, and to hear other people's perspectives. It's important to go in and be eternally curious. Oh, my goodness, don't we talk about that when we're talking about sales? Folks? How about that. So how are you Hector? Unfortunately, we are already hard pressed for time. So that being said, two things here if you wrap up the episode one please go ahead and give us a shout in terms of where folks can go ahead, find you to continue this conversation. But also number two, please go ahead and give us your final thoughts for the audience today.

Hector Roos  22:30  
Well, you can find me anywhere on roofs for Florida, right here roost for Florida. I'm on all social medias or.com You can find me there. But as a parting thought, you know, we all we all experienced immense stress trauma in the lockdowns and the pandemic more some more than others. And that's absolutely valid. That's absolutely true. It doesn't take I'm not trying to take away anything of what anybody's felt, or experienced. And a lot of people who have moved to Florida, who from from states who had a lot worse. I you know, I'm super sympathetic to them. I understand that they're coming from a situation that was horrific. And coming to Florida, some people, honestly, some people in Florida did have very similar experiences. But I will tell you, I clearly wasn't that wasn't as bad in the, in the totality, especially in some places where they live, sometimes some people weren't even touched. But the reality is that at this point, it's not just a COVID region, we have to move past the trauma and look at look at the future. You know, we have government that still wants to, you know, pretend to be the CO parents, right. We we have, we have basically our fundamental rights, whether it's self defense, or, or the idea of medical freedom, these things are still under threat. And we this doesn't stop just because COVID or the pandemic is basically over. Or is it really because we hear the next one coming up. So we need libertarian in office we need to libertarian running anywhere we can we're very easy ballot access in Florida and it would be a shame if we didn't have a candidate confronting the the the what the media is painted as the next basically the next Donald Trump with the next president and potential president united states. I'm glad to be there. I'm here as a as a servant for the cause. And the soldier for the mission for the movement. And you can find me here I was from Florida and I really appreciate rioted for you to have me and your listeners to continue to have this conversation here. You can learn more about me, come talk to me or donate to my campaign at roots for florida.com. Thank you. Oh, all right,

Brian Nichols  24:30  
folks, we'll make sure we include all those links in the show notes. And for you podcast, audio listener, all you got to do is click the artwork in your podcast catcher, it'll bring you right over to the Brian Nichols show.com where you can find today's entire episode, all of the social media links and other links that Hector outlined there. And also you can find the entire transcript of today's episode and also you will find the direct link to the YouTube version of the program head over there and make sure you go ahead hit that subscribe button and little notification bell and oh by the Wait a little housekeeping folks. Yeah, I'm gonna be out and about over the next few weeks. So we're gonna have a little bit different of a schedule. I mean, yeah, we're still gonna have our shows released, but likely they're going to be a lot of micro episodes. So be prepared for that as we're going forward over the next few days. But don't worry as we kick off August. I'll be right there rockin and rollin again, and I'll be starting the week off heading out to Florida. Hector, I'll be down your neck of the woods visiting Young Americans for Liberty revolution. 2022. So folks make sure hey, we just had an actually that was yesterday's episode, Brandon Williams and he joined us from Young Americans for Liberty talking about the amazing hero 22 year old who took down that madman here in Indiana and at that mall. And by the way, did you hear the new news? Eight out of his 10 shots that he took on the the guy that was getting ready to do the the mass shooting, he hit them within 15 seconds at 40 yards. That is incredible. And by the way, that kid ended up saving hundreds of lives. If you missed that episode, folks, don't worry. I'll include that right for you here. If you're on the YouTube, I'll include that below. And I'll see you over there. But with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off here on The Brian Nichols Show for libertarian gubernatorial candidate in Florida Hector Roos say that 10 times fast. We'll see you tomorrow for listening to The Brian Nichols Show. Find more episodes at the Brian Nichols show.com

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