Chris King,
We must demonstrate better values, vision, candidate says
a Winter Park businessman and Democratic candidate for governor, tells an Orlando town hall gathering that he has a better vision for Florida than that of his GOP rival.
Chris King said he’s the Democratic candidate for governor best suited to fight back against Republican attacks at a town hall in Orlando on Thursday night.
“This is where we lose, over and over again,” he said, citing a GOP rival’s ad. “Adam Putnam in that first ad, he [says] again … ‘Faith and family.’ We can’t cede that ground. We have better values. We have a better vision, and we have to put that in ads as well.”
The event was the second of a series of town-hall meetings hosting all four Democratic candidates for governor, organized by the Central Florida chapters of Grassroots Progressives, the Women’s March, Indivisible, Tuesday Resistance and Challenge Politics. Former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham appeared last week.
King, a businessman from Winter Park, joked: “We have been all over the state of Florida, but it is so fun to be in your hometown. When you’re here, you never know who you see. I see my guidance counselor.”
He told the crowd of about 200 at First Unitarian Church of Orlando: “I believe this is the year that Central Florida could send a Democratic governor to Tallahassee. I’m here tonight to try to make the case to you that this is the Democrat you should get behind, because I’m the Democrat who’s positioned to win. And most of all, we can be the Democrat who can be transformative when we win.”
He differentiated himself from the other Democrats — Graham, former Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine and Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum — by stressing his labor ties and his endorsement by the American Federation of Government Employees.
“The labor community, the working family community, has in many respects lost faith or seen a Democratic Party that has become largely indifferent to the pocketbook issues of working families and labor,” King said, citing what he heard from labor leaders.
“This is the Democrat that from day one said, ‘I’m not running in a traditional lens in Democratic politics,’ ” he added. “This is not an identity politics race. … Labor will have a seat at my table, and that’s the first time
“This is the Democrat that from day one said, ‘I’m not running in a traditional lens in Democratic politics.’ ” Democrat Chris King, gubernatorial candidate
a governor has said that in decades.”
King acknowledged that a Democratic governor might have to deal with a Republican legislature, saying, “We have to assume together that any Democratic governor we drop in there may drop into occupied territory.”
So he said Democrats had to be realistic about what could be accomplished. Directing $1 billion in public and private funds toward affordable housing was something that could be done with the governor’s veto power over budgets, he said. “Simply by winning, we will pull that off.”
Regarding his plan for free community college and trade school: “I’ve already thought ahead about how to sell that to Republicans,” he said. “You know where it’s been really successful? The state of Tennessee … where a Republican governor and Republican legislature say it’s the best thing they’ve ever done.”
But, King said, “I’m not going to sit in front of you and tell you we’ve got the votes to expand Medicaid in the state of Florida.” He would take the issue to voters in a ballot referendum in 2020, he said, as well as the issue of banning assault weapons.
“In my view, we’re not going to be able to do it legislatively,” he said. “From the very first day, I said assault weapons are the biggest and hardest issue in the state of Florida. … The opposition is tough, and as some of the excitement and energy [following] Parkland wanes, it’s going to get tougher.”
King also said he would be a governor who would give “a fullthroated response in support of Dreamers” and in support of immigrants, especially after President Donald Trump’s “shithole” comments in January.
“Imagine if we had Gov. Chris King in office when Donald Trump said that,” he said. “Those are moments a governor should stand up and say what he said was wrong, what he said was cruel, what he said was un-American, and in Florida I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that’s not the spirit of our state.”