Jay Collins

Thank you.

And I did confirm today we will have on Zoom Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins along with Colonel Dudley here in town to talk about the Veterans Day celebration that will be on the 9th, but they'll be in on the 9th.

The celebration will be on the 11th, which we'll do live from there also.

Okay.

Thank you, Vern.

And Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jay.

And, Liv, I want to talk about this state Senate race here in the Tampa Bay area.

It's gotten really nasty, and this all goes back to when Governor DeSantis chose Jay Collins as his lieutenant governor.

That opened up a special election, and there was a big upset.

Yeah, so back in March, there was a special election, as you mentioned, to fill that vacancy.

But there are two quotes that I wanted to share.

One of them was by Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins, and that was on August 4th.

The lieutenant governor was appointed to that position by the governor.

And his quote was speaking to Governor DeSantis' frustration of the trust funding.

It is every respected leader in the public safety community throughout the state of Florida.

We have legislators telling you the same thing.

Senate President Ben Albritton, Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins.

What this is going to do to the public safety community is not going to benefit anybody in the state of Florida, right? We're going to see longer response times than we already do.

You know, when they rally behind the person that, you know, they may not have had their person that won the primary, and then they support the person that won the primary.

Republicans, you know, they're sitting there, you know, whether it was Jay Collins or whoever, you know, there were a bunch of people running in that race.

Even if you supported Jay Collins, you have to get out and vote for Byron Donalds.

We need every single vote we can

get.

So you're somebody, you're a journalist, and I've seen you.

You've interviewed like Jay Collins, Byron Donalds.

You're a conservative.

How do you kind of stay objective when you're interviewing these political candidates? Because you're a candidate yourself and they might be one flavor of conservative and you might be another.

And some Florida folks are upset about that.

They w- they wanted him to go out on a limb and, and buck Trump and select either Renner or Jay Collins, and he didn't do so.

And I think there's a lot of political calculation that goes into that decision, so you know, it is what it is.

Yeah.

Isaias made landfall near Destin, Florida last night with winds hitting 170 kilometers per hour.

But Jay Collins, the state's lieutenant governor, says it could have been much worse.

As it came to landfall, it became more diffuse.

So you saw it slow down and start to curve off to the north and to the right there, and, uh, that probably was very good for us overall.

Yeah, I, I would agree with that.

Um, I would, I would say that the bigger issue in the primary was actually Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins.

He, um, he had, like, um, under $10 million through the campaign by a couple big donors.

But what, what Collins was able to do was he's able to galvanize the protest vote.

I mean, Fishback brought in a lot of younger voters, a lot of the GOPer types, but Collins got a lot of the, the rurals I, I mentioned before, who are not coming over to To Donald's based on, you know, cultural lack of affinity or, you know, based on whatever.

But it was like Jay Collins was the guy who got, uh, 25% of the vote, give or take.

And, um, you know, Collins has been an asset to Donalds.

He's campaigned with Donalds.