During a press conference this week, Florida gubernatorial candidate Paul Renner (R) announced a series of steps to end corruption in government, including rooting out government contracts of waste, fraud, and abuse and cleaning up the "Swamp" in D.C.
Renner's proposal includes stock disclosures for elected officials.
"Elected officials must disclose stock trades within three days, and if they fail to do so, the penalty would be a fine in the amount of that trade," Renner said. "If they're engaged in insider trading, they are subject to removal from office."
The call comes after some questions around one of Renner's gubernatorial opponents, Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL), and his stock trading practices. Rep. Donalds is arguably the favorite in the governor's race given the support he's received and his financial footing in the race.
Moreover, Renner vowed to fine or remove elected officials for contracts or appropriations that go to themselves or their employers in the amount of the appropriation.
Renner also pledged to eradicate foreign influence in the state's citizen initiative process, referencing a Swiss billionaire's 14 million dollar influence on Amendment 3 (recreational marijuana) and Amendment 4 (abortion access) on the ballot of Florida's 2024 election.
A bill on the issue is currently making its way through the Florida Legislature.
"We do not allow foreign contributions for campaigns. We should not allow them for campaigns to affect and influence our constitution," Renner said. "We need a bill to ban any foreign contributions into citizen initiatives, period. That needs to happen right away. They failed to do it last year. They need to get it done now."
Furthering his plan to root out corruption, Renner promised to hold elected officials accountable for lying on travel forms or other documents, calling it a "sweetheart deal" for them, but not for everyday criminals.
"If a common criminal steals that amount, they get a felony. We need to align our statutes so that politicians don't get a break on criminal sanctions that a criminal and everyday life does not get, and we will change that as well," Renner said.
Renner also vowed to give politicians more than a "slap on the wrist" with probation or a fine for stealing taxpayer money and instead serve jail time.
He further suggested automatic referrals to the statewide prosecutors in an effort to remove local pressure when deciding to prosecute or not prosecute a case through the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) and the statewide prosecutor's office.
"We will strengthen enforcement through additional resources for both the FDLE Public Corruption Unit, as well as additional statewide prosecutors to get this done and to have a meaningful enforcement process for public corruption," Renner said.
In addition, he pushed for more work into the state's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been run by Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia since his appointment to the post by Gov. Ron DeSantis in July 2025.
"We need to institutionalize those and make it permanent. We need ongoing auditing of all government contracting, state, local, and otherwise, at our universities as well, with surprise audits, additionally, so that we make sure to find things that are not being currently found," Renner said.
He specifically mentioned medicaid fraud, calling it a "guarantee" that tens of millions were going undetected in state budgets and pledging to use artificial intelligence (AI) to help identify the problem.
"We're going to leverage modern technology that we have, through AI and other sources, to find those patterns of conduct, those patterns of spending, that would highlight possible public corruption, and when we find it, we will lower the hammer," Renner said.
