He wants pot to be legal, he wants all property taxes abolished and he refuses to get a driver's license. Oh, and he wants to be Governor.
Adrian Wyllie, the Libertarian candidate for Governor of Florida has been stumping around the state for well over a year talking to anyone who'll listen to his platform of less taxes and fewer regulations. He spoke this week to WUWF's Bob Barrett about getting the Libertarian message out across the state.
Wyllie:
"The people of Florida are ready to embrace, not only a third party but the message of economic freedom and personal liberty. What we find out there is so many people who are disgusted with the two party duopoly, specifically my two opponents for governor, and they're just yearning for something different, another alternative and someone who is in it for the right reasons, for the people of Florida. Someone who is not a millionaire, someone who is just a middle class small business owner, I understand the problems that people are facing."
On the war chests of his opponents and his own fundraising:
"Because of the nature of the spending on the attack ads, it's done a lot to hurt both of them [Scott and Crist] and that has gone a long way towards people saying, 'I'm not going to vote for the lesser evil again.' I'm not going to complain about their strategy because it's benefiting us. The fact that they are attacking one another- it doesn't inspire people to want to vote for them."
On fighting to be included in public debates:
"For a campaign that's only raised $100k compared to the potential $100m of my opponents, the debates were always mission critical to us. We have retained a first amendment attorney to represent us in legal challenges, which I expect to be forthcoming. We have some other tricks up our sleeve as well."
On his "extreme" tax plan:
"When you consider how far we've gone with the growth of government and the expansion of budgets, it's not extreme at all. The concept is we will offer all Floridians a 100% homestead exemption, if you own your home you will pay no taxes on it. The way that works is in conjunction with our state budget cuts is reducing the cronyism, the bloatedness, the no-bid contracts out of the budget. We can reallocate sales tax revenues to offset any losses to cities and counties from the homestead tax. That way the government is still fully funded and the people of Florida have the opportunity to keep an extra $200 a month in their pockets. That's how you stimulate the economy, not by bigger government, but by allowing people to keep more of what they earn."
On the experiment with these ideas in Kansas via Governor Brownback:
"The devil is in the details, you can't cut critical government services. But we have so much fraud, waste, abuse, so much good ole boy network in the system. We're paying two or three times market value on crony contracts. We can also save money by legalizing marijuana, which is also part of my platform. The incarceration rate for possession of marijuana in Florida is extremely high. That's something that destroys lives and families. We can save money in areas like that. The savings are there if we take a common sense approach."
What about schools?
"My concept with schools is basically there is so much bureaucratic waste, what we're doing, we're trying to push all the funding to the top first. So much funding is coming from the federal department of education, from the state, and by the time it reaches the classroom only pennies on the dollar are left. Between k-12 spendin gbetween state and local funding we spend an average of $12,000 per student per year. If that money was actually making it to the classroom we would have more than enough to pay teachers a fantastic living wage, we'd have more than enough so they wouldn't have to go to Walmart to buy supplies. We could have art, we could have music we could have sports. The problem is in all the waste... if we can give that money back to the local level, the control back to the local level you'll find we can do a lot more without more funding."
On marriage equality:
"I don't believe the government has the right to tell anyone who they can associate with or who they can marry. Our objective is to get government out of the business of marriage altogether. Let's leave that to individuals and churches. I don't know where we deemed it acceptable to let government step in between two people's lifelong commitment to each other, that's not the way it ought to be. When I married my wife, Dawn, 23 years ago, why did I have to go to the government? Why did I have to pay a fee? That's reminiscent of the feudal system."
On surrendering his driver's license:
"I still do NOT have a driver's license. I'm not opposed to the concept of a driver's license per se, but what I am opposed to is the real idea, if your listeners have renewed their license than you know you have to produce an array of documentation, that is not easy for everyone to collect, and now submit to a biometric facial recognition scan that goes into a national database and I believe that is a violation of our fourth amendment rights. In order to protest and gain legal standing to challenge the constitutionality of the law it was necessary for me to surrender my driver's license and, so far, be arrested on two different occasions."
He said we should get some news on his battle to be included in the gubernatorial debates within a week.
