- July 24, 2026
Paul Renner is a veteran and attorney. He's a Palm Coast resident. He served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2015 to 2024, including his final two years as the Speaker of the House. He will be on the Aug. 18 Republican ballot in the race to be Florida's next governor. He's got a plan, but polls show he has a tough battle ahead, as he is projected to earn less than 10% of the Republican vote.
What follows is an edited transcript of a July 23 interview.
The race's Republican frontrunner, Byron Donalds, has been invited to be interviewed as well.
What is at the heart of your motivation to be governor?
I love the state. I've spent my whole life here. My grandfather moved here almost 100 years ago. My dad was born here. And of course I live moved here at 6 months of age and have lived here ever since, except for college and the Navy. And so I love this state.
I don't want to go backwards. We've become a victim of our success here in Florida. We've done so well that people want to be here. And as a result of that, you see skyrocketing home prices, insurance, taxes, electric bills, and I sense that people feel that we're losing control of our destiny in Florida.
You want someone at the helm who's helped build the free state of Florida, but is going to preserve and protect it. We need to make sure we're taking care of the people who are truly Florida residents. I think is the challenge of the moment.
If elected governor, what would you do to make Florida more affordable?
Right after I get inaugurated next January, I want a special session specifically on affordability to cover four things.
One is to address property taxes, depending on what happens on the ballot. I'm the only candidate with a specific plan to eliminate homestead property taxes, help small businesses, renters.
It's a comprehensive plan that goes beyond just homestead property, with a combination of savings that we can do at all levels of government, with permanent DOGE across the state — the local government, university, special districts — to save a good chunk of that, so we don't have to have replacement taxes.
But the ones we do, we want to shift the burden over to tourists, people who vacation here, who speculate here, out-of-state and out-of-country private equity companies, who turn homes into rentals. They'll pay a little bit more under my plan, and we'll shift that burden away from those who make Florida home. That's number one on taxes.
And then we have a plan to reduce insurance rates by 10% to 20% through a series of reforms, as well as electric rates by reforming how utilities charge, so they are prioritizing lower cost options, not getting paid a guaranteed profit based on how much they spend, which of course incentivizes them to spend more.
And then separately on affordability is stopping the construction of these 1.0 versions of the A.I. hyperscale data centers.
Imagine if you bragged to your friends about your music collection and you pointed to your wall and said, "Look at my eight-track tape collection." That's really what's on offer with these data centers. Over time, they will get more manageable. But right now, this is a terrible deal for Florida. We need to take a pause on it statewide and then wait for those companies to offer us a better deal with technology that develops, because what's going to happen is they're actually going to abandon these large scale data centers that are going to be the dinosaurs, the eight-track tapes, if you will, of data centers in the future
Next I have a couple questions about some of the platforms on your website. How do you balance having compassion for your neighbors while also having zero tolerance for ille illegal immigration?
Illegal immigration is driving up home prices. It's putting a burden on taxpayers and in terms of education, health care — all the things that taxpayers have to foot the bill for, and people can't afford their own bills. So, I'm compassionate for people who are Florida residents, U.S. citizens, and that's where compassion belongs.
Certainly, people that go through the process and become immigrants — I'm married to one — that's a different story. But people that are coming across the border, people that should not be here, need to leave.
While speaker of the house, you promoted safeguards for children from social media exploitation. Is that mission accomplished or does more need to be done?
More needs to be done. You now have A.I. on top of that. I'm not against A.I. as a technology, but the threat to kids is, it takes it up an order of magnitude. So, we have children on these addictive social media platforms that are having major psychological issues, depression, suicide, really wrecking them, because it's using addiction to keep them on for hours at a time. And it's been documented everywhere. countries across the globe are banning young children from getting on these addictive platforms, which is positive.
A.I. will only make that worse for children. It just doesn't have a moral compass. And so, humanity has to be in control of technology, not the other way around.
Your campaign website says you support instruction in American exceptionalism in schools. What does that mean to you? And are there aspects of our history that we should avoid teaching?
We should never avoid teaching any aspects of our history. You should always be frank and honest about the good, the bad, and the ugly. But there's a lot more good than bad or ugly.
Reagan said that we cannot guarantee freedom beyond a single generation. It's not part of our bloodstream; it has to be inculcated. It has to be taught. It has to be transmitted and really given to the next generation to love this country for any of its faults. Freedom has always served society across the globe better.
Too often you have the indoctrination, I would call it, of the other philosophy that views America as a place that ought to be torn to the ground.
We need to study Marx, but we also need to study Adam Smith. We need to study what happened in the Soviet Union or Cuba. We need to study also why America has done so much better than those countries. And that's American exceptionalism.
According to Pew Research Center, more and more people see the opposing party not just as a platform they disagree with, but also being immoral. And I feel like we tend to, now more than ever, villainize people that disagree with us. What do you think we can do to be able to disagree but still be agreeable?
As a military veteran, I fought for everybody. I wore one uniform, and the guy next to me might have been a liberal Democrat — I didn't care. We were there for a mission and a purpose, which was the purpose of our country to protect our citizens in the case of Desert Storm, against Saddam Hussein and what was happening there and in Afghanistan, to go after the people that bombed the towers, at 9/11, and make sure we're protected against the threat of Islam here in the homeland. And so that meant that you're protecting everyone's free speech, the right to petition for redress of grievances, right of press and assembly and everything.
The challenge we have is a philosophy that does not believe any truth. It can't define what a woman is. We're at a crossroads, because as a person of faith, that's where I get my capital T Truth. That's where I get my north star, in terms of what leads to happiness, what leads to success, human thriving. And I think the keys to our 250 years has been faith. It's family. it's been patriotism.
And if you lose things like that, that you can rally around, then it's hard for the nation to stay united.
But I do believe we must have a united nation. As Lincoln said, "A house divided cannot stand." And so I would make every effort to try to bridge that divide without compromising my belief in what I believe are timeless truths that make of Florida and America exceptional.
As governor and in the Legislature there is an ability to say, "That's something that I don't agree with," and to outlaw it. Can other viewpoints coexist and still be legal?
Ideas and speech have to coexist because the First Amendment dictates that they coexist. Having both sides debating these issues — the legislation gets better. it addresses some of the complaints by the Democrats in that case, or if the roles were reversed, Republicans raising objections, the Democrats would say, "OK, that's probably true." and so we get better laws as a result of that clashing of ideas. And it can be civil, but it can be vigorous.
We never silenced the opposition. With a supermajority, you can waive a lot of rules and just jam things through. I never did that.
We as the majority party had to argue why we're doing what we're doing and make the case, and it made us better — to deliver that case to voters.
How does this relate to the concept of Home Rule? How do you balance saying, "We're going to take the state in this direction, but we're also going to respect that the local leaders also need to run things the best way that matches what their community desires"?
As I've spent time on the campaign trail, I've really come to a firm conclusion that people want more local control, and they deserve it.
We don't want the federal government stripping away from us all of our ability to act at the state level, and so we shouldn't do it to the local. So I do believe that pendulum needs to come back into balance. That is partly the answer to how we control our own destiny when it comes to matters of growth and where things get built and making sure that local governments that know better about their communities than the state, will have control over the destiny of their communities by listening to their voters.
Last question: When I heard that you were going to run, and I've interviewed you many times — seen you rise to that level at the Speaker of the House — I assumed that you would be the front runner in this race. And right now, you're not. What is the main reason that you think people should shift their support to you, as opposed to others that may be leading you in the polls?
First of all, there's certainly been an effort to try to — I don't want to say rig the election — but to make sure that no money flows to any other candidate that can get their message out, but only to one candidate who refuses to even get on the stage and debate. So, it's really an affront to the voters.
When we get our message in front of voters, we convert those votes, and we beat Byron Donalds. "Undecided" is still the frontrunner, always has been.
We believe we'll convert a lot of those undecideds in the upcoming weeks before the election for five reasons:
One is, you want a proven leader who's been battle tested. I served 20 years as a Navy commander. I served in two wars, leading under pressure as a state prosecutor, trying violent felons as a business owner. I was a partner in a business. I've had private sector experience and also leading the Florida House, about 500 employees. So, I've had these executive roles. That is important for an executive office like governor, and the other candidates come nowhere close.
The same is true for results. The governor (Ron DeSantis) said those two years were unprecedented among all the states in the country. We got more done in those two years when I was leading than any other two years in Florida history, frankly. And so, I just say when I was in charge, conservatives won every battle. But we also did some bipartisan things that were big wins, like social media, like the Florida Wildlife Corridor, protecting our environment.
Third is vision. We have a contract with Florida on our website, voterenner.com, a comprehensive a plan for the first 100 days, my written commitment to get after affordability, safety, health freedom, our environment, and also just keeping Florida free.
Fourth, I've led from the front with the governor when others have waited for the battle to come to them. In school board races and for amendments, I fought vigorously, traveled the state, spent over $2 million in 2024 alone out of the stuff we raised — money that I can't use in the governor's race. That's what you should expect from a leader. The other guy sent out a post on social media, but that doesn't get it done.
A fifth one is experience at the state. Byron Donalds was in Congress for the last five years. not his fault, but I have much more experience at the state level. I know the incoming presiding officers and can work with all of them at a very high level and be effective on day one. There's no on-the-job training because I was really the number two, as speaker of the house. I'm ready to go.
