How did you meet your wife, Ginger?
I met Ginger at Mara Lago. Ginger was there with her mother attending an event supporting Trump. I was there because Kimberly Guilfoyle and Donald Trump, Jr. had invited me there to Kimberly’s birthday party. Kimberly joked that I didn’t have a date and Ginger offered to go with me as my date for food and dancing and President Trump immediately said that was the one for me and I needed to do whatever I could to get Ginger to hang out with me. In a lot of ways, it was COVID love. She was from California and typically not easy to execute a courtship across an entire continent, but since California was shut down and Florida was wide open, since her work was remote, I said why don’t you come to the panhandle, our beach is open, and restaurants are open – that was a big part of my pitch. As much as it was my own magnetism – I have Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis to thank for very different reasons. If Cali had been open, I don’t know that I could have gotten her here.
I just love being married. You hear throughout your life as a single in your 30’s – marriage is the old ball and chain. I found marriage to be the greatest institution that I’ve been able to be a part of. You are in the same canoe with someone. There is teamwork and love that grows from that that is unlike anything else I have ever experienced in my life.
What are you working on for our district right now?
Two big priorities: Accelerating the delivery of new helicopters to the Whiting Field mission and expanding the role of Northwest Florida in developing hypersonic weapon systems.
I questioned the secretary of defense very rigorously where America falls vs. China with hypersonic weapon systems. And from what I can tell you unequivocally is that we are behind. One reason we are behind is because we spent so much time on the global war on terror figuring out innovative ways to engage in urban warfare and counterterrorism and we lost sight of our pacing challenge. China wasn’t trying to install democracy in the caves of central Asia, they were developing and deploying hypersonic weapon systems. Russia has now in the Ukraine war used hypersonic weapons for the first time in the history of the world in combat. Our challenge is how to go from research and development to fielding those systems. Today, we do far too much of this testing in the Pacific Rim. And that presents real intelligence vulnerabilities. It is not a good idea to be testing the weapons we might have to one day use, God forbid, in a conflict with China over the Pacific Rim. The northern Gulf provides the perfect platform for this work but because hypersonic weapons go a lot farther and a lot faster, the envelope we have for testing must expand. I spent eleven years of my public life fighting against oil drilling in the northern Gulf, but it isn’t just about protecting what we already have, we actually have to grow southward beyond the Florida Keys to protect the mission here and to grow our mission at Hurlburt, Eglin, and NAS Pensacola. We work every day to try to get more funding to upgrade the telemetry and the radar systems, not just on Navarre Beach and Okaloosa Island but actually in Panacea and the Keys because that’s what allows that mission to utilize the full Gulf. During my time in Congress, we have obtained tens of millions of dollars in additional resources to build out that testing envelope. And, we have by order of President Trump a ten-year ban on any additional energy exploration off the coast of Florida. So now, I want to grow that, and I want to build a first of its kind weapons-integrated technology center in Northwest Florida so that this becomes the hub of hypersonic research and development. We got the first $40 million for that center in the last National Defense Authorization Act but that is a half billion dollar project so I have to work against that goal to get more and more money to build out a weapons center here. That is a major feature of the military mission in Northwest Florida.
At Whiting, we have to get more new aircraft to do our training mission.
When I was first elected to this job, I went to Whiting for my first visit and the instructors were telling me that those were the aircraft that they trained. Not, those were the platforms, those were the exact aircraft. We have endeavored to get the Navy to get an off-the-shelf solution, not the procurement of a new aircraft that may take a generation but an off-the-shelf solution from a commercial entity so that we can have high end digital assets for training. Leonardo won that award and we used Triumph funds to ensure Leonardo wasn’t doing building, operations and maintenance in some other place for our mission and that they were doing it at Whiting in Santa Rosa. Great plan – the problem is that we have had a half dozen aircraft delivered. We are behind. Part of that, Leonardo is saying supply chain issues and the manufacturing of these systems. But I’m going to Whiting in the next couple weeks to get a mission brief on how we can accelerate that. It is a major safety issue for our pilots, but it is also a way to deepen the roots of that training mission in Santa Rosa County. The Army would love to have all of the helicopter training at Fort Rucker and so we need to fend them off with a chair on most days. However, if we get that investment and get faster delivery of those aircraft, then the mission at Whiting is more up to date and more capable and secure for a generation.
Those two are at the top of the list.
You find me today preparing for the testimony of the homeland security director, Mayorkas, and what I expect is that democrats in this hearing will try to over-emphasize what the Biden administration is trying to do to combat white supremacy and I think they will under emphasize the crisis at the border. I was at the border in Yuma, Arizona several weeks ago and about half of the migrants I encountered were on their way to Florida. I told them to follow the sun west until they found it. We are not just a magnet for people escaping the liberal governments of Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, and Jersey. We are also a magnet for illegal immigration. This shows us when you have hundreds of thousands of people every month coming into our country illegally, we are going to get a really high share of that. We are a border state, too, in that regard. I try to figure out how to ask sharp questions. In the Congress I am known as someone who asks tough questions. I view the five minutes I have as a very precious resource of Northwest Florida, and I want to make sure that we use it well.
Next week: Topics include Florida Power and Light (FPL) and Transportation
And people are on paths that they don’t even know they are on, it is a path that God has set out for them. I find that my faith is a way to inspire my imagination about the good that can be done. In government and politics, the daily grind can often get you down. For me – it raises the ceiling and frankly, the floor. In tough times for our country, the district, whether it is an oil spill or a hurricane and a local matter, I always believe that God doesn’t give us more than we can handle. In my life that has been true and the path for Northwest Florida, that has been true.
How did you meet your wife, Ginger?
I met Ginger at Mara Lago. Ginger was there with her mother attending an event supporting Trump. I was there because Kimberly Guilfoyle and Donald Trump, Jr. had invited me there to Kimberly’s birthday party. Kimberly joked that I didn’t have a date and Ginger offered to go with me as my date for food and dancing and President Trump immediately said that was the one for me and I needed to do whatever I could to get Ginger to hang out with me. In a lot of ways, it was COVID love. She was from California and typically not easy to execute a courtship across an entire continent, but since California was shut down and Florida was wide open, since her work was remote, I said why don’t you come to the panhandle, our beach is open, and restaurants are open – that was a big part of my pitch. As much as it was my own magnetism – I have Gavin Newsom and Ron DeSantis to thank for very different reasons. If Cali had been open, I don’t know that I could have gotten her here.
I just love being married. You hear throughout your life as a single in your 30’s – marriage is the old ball and chain. I found marriage to be the greatest institution that I’ve been able to be a part of. You are in the same canoe with someone. There is teamwork and love that grows from that that is unlike anything else I have ever experienced in my life.
What are you working on for our district right now?
Two big priorities: Accelerating the delivery of new helicopters to the Whiting Field mission and expanding the role of Northwest Florida in developing hypersonic weapon systems.
I questioned the secretary of defense very rigorously where America falls vs. China with hypersonic weapon systems. And from what I can tell you unequivocally is that we are behind. One reason we are behind is because we spent so much time on the global war on terror figuring out innovative ways to engage in urban warfare and counterterrorism and we lost sight of our pacing challenge. China wasn’t trying to install democracy in the caves of central Asia, they were developing and deploying hypersonic weapon systems. Russia has now in the Ukraine war used hypersonic weapons for the first time in the history of the world in combat. Our challenge is how to go from research and development to fielding those systems. Today, we do far too much of this testing in the Pacific Rim. And that presents real intelligence vulnerabilities. It is not a good idea to be testing the weapons we might have to one day use, God forbid, in a conflict with China over the Pacific Rim. The northern Gulf provides the perfect platform for this work but because hypersonic weapons go a lot farther and a lot faster, the envelope we have for testing must expand. I spent eleven years of my public life fighting against oil drilling in the northern Gulf, but it isn’t just about protecting what we already have, we actually have to grow southward beyond the Florida Keys to protect the mission here and to grow our mission at Hurlburt, Eglin, and NAS Pensacola. We work every day to try to get more funding to upgrade the telemetry and the radar systems, not just on Navarre Beach and Okaloosa Island but actually in Panacea and the Keys because that’s what allows that mission to utilize the full Gulf. During my time in Congress, we have obtained tens of millions of dollars in additional resources to build out that testing envelope. And, we have by order of President Trump a ten-year ban on any additional energy exploration off the coast of Florida. So now, I want to grow that, and I want to build a first of its kind weapons-integrated technology center in Northwest Florida so that this becomes the hub of hypersonic research and development. We got the first $40 million for that center in the last National Defense Authorization Act but that is a half billion dollar project so I have to work against that goal to get more and more money to build out a weapons center here. That is a major feature of the military mission in Northwest Florida.
At Whiting, we have to get more new aircraft to do our training mission.
When I was first elected to this job, I went to Whiting for my first visit and the instructors were telling me that those were the aircraft that they trained. Not, those were the platforms, those were the exact aircraft. We have endeavored to get the Navy to get an off-the-shelf solution, not the procurement of a new aircraft that may take a generation but an off-the-shelf solution from a commercial entity so that we can have high end digital assets for training. Leonardo won that award and we used Triumph funds to ensure Leonardo wasn’t doing building, operations and maintenance in some other place for our mission and that they were doing it at Whiting in Santa Rosa. Great plan – the problem is that we have had a half dozen aircraft delivered. We are behind. Part of that, Leonardo is saying supply chain issues and the manufacturing of these systems. But I’m going to Whiting in the next couple weeks to get a mission brief on how we can accelerate that. It is a major safety issue for our pilots, but it is also a way to deepen the roots of that training mission in Santa Rosa County. The Army would love to have all of the helicopter training at Fort Rucker and so we need to fend them off with a chair on most days. However, if we get that investment and get faster delivery of those aircraft, then the mission at Whiting is more up to date and more capable and secure for a generation.
Those two are at the top of the list.
You find me today preparing for the testimony of the homeland security director, Mayorkas, and what I expect is that democrats in this hearing will try to over-emphasize what the Biden administration is trying to do to combat white supremacy and I think they will under emphasize the crisis at the border. I was at the border in Yuma, Arizona several weeks ago and about half of the migrants I encountered were on their way to Florida. I told them to follow the sun west until they found it. We are not just a magnet for people escaping the liberal governments of Minnesota, New York, Connecticut, and Jersey. We are also a magnet for illegal immigration. This shows us when you have hundreds of thousands of people every month coming into our country illegally, we are going to get a really high share of that. We are a border state, too, in that regard. I try to figure out how to ask sharp questions. In the Congress I am known as someone who asks tough questions. I view the five minutes I have as a very precious resource of Northwest Florida, and I want to make sure that we use it well.
Next week: Topics include Florida Power and Light (FPL) and Transportation