(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . WHAT HAPPENED TO LOCAL CONTROL? [1] ['Latinos', 'Republicans For David Jolly', 'Angmar Barrow', 'Thom Hartmann', 'Keith Frohreich', 'News Corpse'] Date: 2026-10-07 Support Republicans for Jolly Here I remember when “local control” was supposed to be a conservative principle. The idea was pretty simple: the government closest to the people usually knows the community best. Your town. Your county. Your school district. Your neighbors. Not somebody sitting hundreds of miles away in Tallahassee deciding that every corner of Florida should be governed exactly the same way. That used to sound pretty Republican. Honestly, it still does to me. Which is one reason David Jolly’s position on home rule caught my attention. Jolly has been making a straightforward argument in this campaign: local communities should be trusted to make local decisions, and Tallahassee should not automatically override them simply because state politicians do not like the outcome. That should not be controversial. Florida is a huge, complicated state. What makes sense in Miami may not make sense in Hendry County. What works in Key West may not work in Jacksonville. What a farming community needs is going to look very different from what a dense coastal city needs. And that is exactly why local government exists. Yet somewhere along the way, “small government” started looking an awful lot like one very powerful state government telling everybody else what they are allowed to do. That is not the version of conservatism I remember. If we actually believe government closest to the people works best, then we have to believe it even when a local community makes a decision we personally would not make. That is the hard part about freedom. Sometimes other people use it differently than you would. Maybe a town wants stricter environmental protections. Maybe another community wants different development rules. Maybe local voters approve something Tallahassee politicians dislike. You do not have to agree with every one of those decisions to believe the people who actually live there deserve a meaningful voice in making them. And politically, it raises a bigger question for Republicans like me: What exactly are we conserving if we no longer trust communities to govern themselves? For years, conservatives warned about distant government bureaucrats believing they knew better than ordinary citizens. We were skeptical of centralized power. We talked about federalism. We talked about states’ rights. We talked about returning decisions to the people closest to them. But that principle cannot conveniently stop at the state line. If Washington should not micromanage Florida, then Tallahassee should probably think twice before micromanaging every city and county in Florida. The principle is the same. And this is where I keep coming back to David Jolly. I am not supporting him because I suddenly agree with Democrats about everything. I do not. I am supporting him in part because I hear him talking about principles Republicans once talked about constantly. Less centralized government. Local decision-making. Individual freedom. Respecting voters. Government that understands there are limits to its authority. Maybe that is why his message resonates with some Republicans. We recognize it. There is something familiar about being told that government does not always know best. There is something familiar about trusting citizens. There is something familiar about believing that power should be pushed downward instead of constantly pulled upward. And there is definitely something familiar about being suspicious when politicians ask us to give them more control simply because they promise they will use it against people we disagree with. Power does not stay pointed at the other side forever. That is another conservative lesson worth remembering. If you hand government enormous authority because you like the people currently holding it, eventually somebody you do not like will inherit that same authority. Which is why limiting government power was supposed to be about principle, not convenience. I want my local community to have a voice. I want yours to have one too. Even when our communities make different choices. Especially then. Florida does not need 67 counties and hundreds of municipalities behaving as though they are interchangeable. They are not. That diversity is part of what makes this state Florida. So when I hear a candidate saying Tallahassee should trust local people a little more, I listen. Not because I have stopped being conservative. Because that sounds an awful lot like the conservatism I remember. All donations help! Donate here [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/10/7/800109089/community/what-happened-to-local-control/ Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/