1. I won’t lie to you to get elected.
No magic fixes. One member of Congress cannot single-handedly repair Social Security, health care, or the cost of living, and anyone who says otherwise is selling fantasy math. When something takes years of work or a big coalition, I’ll say that out loud.
2. I won’t cash corporate or foreign checks. Period.
No corporate PAC money. No dark-money front groups. No foreign-linked dollars. If money traces back to a corporate treasury, a foreign national, or a shell group hiding its donors, I don’t want it and I’ll send it back. A representative should owe his seat to his district, not to whoever wrote the biggest checks.
3. I won’t play the stock market with inside information.
I will not sit in classified briefings and then trade individual stocks on the side. While I’m in office: no individual stock trading. If I invest, it goes in broad-based funds or a blind trust, not in companies I’m voting on. This seat is not a get-rich plan.
4. I won’t disappear once I win.
You won’t see me only when I need your vote. I will hold regular town halls, publish my votes in plain English, and keep real office hours in Sarasota and across FL-17. If you call or email, you get a response. That’s not a campaign line. It’s the job.
5. I won’t use you as a prop.
If I come to your business, your neighborhood, or your event, it’s to hear what’s working, what’s broken, and what you need. Not to collect B-roll for ads. I’ve spent most of my life on the working side of a paycheck; I know the difference between listening and performing it.
6. I won’t turn every issue into a culture-war stunt.
I’m not running to be a cable-news performer, and I’m not interested in manufactured emergencies staged for the cameras. I’ll call out nonsense on all sides, then get back to work on retirement security, health care costs, insurance you can afford, and the cost of living. If a fight doesn’t move the ball on a real problem, count me out.
7. I won’t pretend the rules shouldn’t apply to me.
No special perks, no carve-outs, no rules for you and different rules for me. If I ask you to live under a law, I’ll live under it too. That includes the reforms I’m campaigning on: term limits, the stock-trading ban, and the lobbying cooling-off when members leave. All of it applies to me first.
8. I won’t play games with your vote.
I will support transparent, well-run elections, and I will respect certified results, win or lose. The voters of FL-17 decide who represents them. Not lawyers, not loopholes.
9. I won’t treat this seat like a career plan.
This job is not a stepping stone to a lobbying gig and not a way to pad my net worth. I won’t trade votes for favors, and I won’t flip a position because a donor calls. Congress should be a tour of duty, not a career. If I change my mind, it will be because the facts changed or because you convinced me.
10. I won’t make you guess who I work for.
I have no party bosses and no leadership ladder to climb. When I say “the people of FL-17,” it means I’m ready to explain my decisions face to face, not just in press releases. You will always know where I stand, even when you disagree. And you will never have to wonder who I answer to. It’s you.
