As the curtain fell on 2025 and I looked at the coming legislative session with my team, a sobering thought kept gnawing at me:
Past performance is no guarantee of future results.
I am a sports guy, through and through. Baseball, football, basketball, I’ll even watch a bunch of guys cutting wood when ESPN calls it a competition. Along with that, I am also fairly addicted to sports movies. Two of my all-time favorites — ’80s classics, of course — are Robert Redford in “The Natural” and Gene Hackman in “Hoosiers.” In both, the seasoned veteran (player and coach, respectively) has achieved the moment — that moment in which they have traversed their paths of hardship and adversity and now stand with the eyes of the world on them. For Roy Hobbs, it was the pennant game and the bottom of the ninth with two men on; for Norman Dale it was the Indiana state high school basketball championship and the last-second jump shot from Jimmy Chitwood. As so often is the case in movies, we are treated to the home run crashing the lights of the stadium and the jump shot catching nothing but net.
Well, politics isn’t Hollywood (despite that old joke) and the past in no way guarantees our future.
The Sunshine State has become ground zero for the conservative policy movement, and that was not achieved easily. From the days of Jeb Bush to Rick Scott and Ron DeSantis, our legislative leaders have consistently taken courageous steps in passing policies that maintained a limited government footprint on our economy, built the country’s largest school choice program, and protected the rights of Floridians against the sledgehammer of Washington, D.C. Taking flak from every angle of opposition along the way, they forged the path. Americans noticed, and they approved. Over the past 20 years, more than three million of them decided to leave their home state and move to Florida. And the overwhelming majority of those new residents cite economic reasons for taking that leap.
As millions of Americans migrated here, Florida’s influence grew, and our Legislature kept the foot on the gas in passing conservative policies, guess what? Their majority grew with it. I often say good policy is good politics. The last quarter-century in Florida proved it.
Which leads us to the present day. And to the eyes of an entire nation, anticipating a brutal campaign season ahead, wondering if the Sunshine State will forge ahead or reverse course. And that thought that has stuck with me: past performance is no guarantee of future results.
So, to Florida’s state representatives, senators and those who guide them across the 2026 session (and beyond), these are the questions the nation has as they chart the course for the next 25 years and, trust me, the entire country is watching:
Will they continue to protect our recovering insurance market, or will they cave to those seeking a return to judicial hellhole status?
Will they enhance our school choice programs with even better choice measures, or will they backtrack on the promises made to millions of parents needing a better opportunity for their child?
Will they address the affordability threats to our economy lingering from Biden-era inflationary measures, or will they abandon market principles because of short-term expediency?
Will they advance reforms to our health-care delivery system that increase the roster of doctors, nurses and other care providers, or will they cave to special interests solely protecting their turf?
Will they show states like California and New York how government should embrace innovations like AI, or will they cower and shoot an airball, leaving Florida at the mercy of radical left state agendas?
Will they protect Floridians and their homes from the worst offenses of government overreach — seizing a person’s residence — or will you swing and miss?
It is not the eyes of the sports world that are upon you, members. It is the eyes of a nation.
So please remember what earned us the reputation as the “Free State of Florida,” the years of blood, sweat and tears that got us to this point… and please, keep your eyes on the ball.
