CNBC's full interview with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: We are very pleased here at the Milken Global Conference to be joined by the governor of the great state of Florida. That is Ron DeSantis. Governor DeSantis, thank you very much for joining us. Hey, thanks for having us. Give us an update on where the economy is right now in Florida. Obviously post-COVID, absolute boom time. I think settling back into an average now, how would you rate and define the economy of Florida? Well, no, no. I think that those COVID years, I don't think you'll ever see anything like that. I mean, we were the epicenter. We had more in my governor's tenure. [00:00:29] Ron DeSantis: more income move into Florida than has ever moved into another American state in the history of the country, even adjusted for inflation. We still see that. But I would say what we've seen really in the last, say, six months is this California wealth tax has had a noticeable effect on pushing some of these very high net worth people out of California because they want to avoid the wealth tax. So you guys have probably reported on some of these people. Very well-known people. We have, but some people, they would argue, Governor, that it's overdone. They pick one or two billionaires and then there's no real effect. I think if you look at Florida over the last two years, let's say, you've had people like Bezos, now Zuckerberg, the Google founders. I mean, this is not just like one or two random people. I mean, this is people voting with their feet in response to some of these policy proposals and not even implementing the policy yet. We don't know if this wealth tax is going to pass, but I think people look at it and they think, okay, five percent. A lot of this is unrealized gains, but it also applies to your voting rights in a company. So if you control voting rights, but you don't even actually, you still pay tax for whatever that voting share would be worth. That's insane. And so people don't want to do it. But I think what it also has shown is your rights to your property shouldn't just be up for grabs based on 50.1 percent of some popular vote. I mean, your property rights, your property rights. This is America 250. That was a core thing that our founding fathers believed in. And I think that initiative here in California has scared a lot of people out. [00:02:01] Speaker 1: So you had this giant sudden influx of companies and people during COVID and right after COVID. I imagine a big part of your job has been to try to figure out how to keep that there. Make sure people say, okay, well, things are over. Let's go back to New York or back to New Jersey or back to wherever it may be. What have you learned in that time about keeping those jobs and that business and that money in Florida? [00:02:23] Ron DeSantis: Well, I think a couple of things we do. One, you can count us for having good tax policy, good regulatory policy and really good fiscal policy. Just since I've been governor, if you take Florida's entire history and the debt we've accumulated, I've paid off over 50 percent of it in seven years. In fact, it used to have the national debt clock in New York and Times Square. I'm getting one for Florida, but it's going to count down. Imagine that. So I think people see that. They're like, this is a very well run state. Other thing is infrastructure. When you have people coming, you've got to do things for infrastructure. infrastructure. So I took about $5 billion from our surplus and I surged it into accelerating some of these key infrastructure projects. So we're delivering things five, 10, 15 years ahead of schedule. A lot of this stuff wasn't even supposed to start till next decade. Final thing is workforce. We're focusing on producing a workforce and not just on kind of the high end, which I know is important to some of these companies. We're doing a lot on skilled trades. There'll be kids graduating high school now in Florida. They get a certification in aviation. Mechanics who go work for SpaceX, for Elon Musk. That's something that we've had a big impact on. And we tell the companies, look, there's things you need. We're nimble. We'll get it done. [00:03:33] Speaker 1: Well, and companies have gone down there. People have gone down there. We know that there's a big fight right now. I'm sure you've seen it with Citadel and the mayor of New York City and Ken Griffin, who, by the way, is at this conference. [00:03:44] Ron DeSantis: But how ridiculous. I mean, think about this. First of all, the policies of, oh, we're going to soak people. We're a highly mobile society. People can move and vote with their feet. Obviously, Ken Griffin moved Citadel to Miami from Chicago. There's been a lot. But to go to somebody's house and to try to target them was so ridiculous and out of bounds, what that mayor did. And I can just tell you, I can look at the economic impact of like a Citadel. And obviously that is positive. But just Ken's philanthropy, you're talking, he's probably given hundreds of millions of dollars just since he's been a Florida resident again for like three or four years. [00:04:20] Speaker 1: Do you think this might lead him to bring more jobs to Florida? Have you talked to Ken Griffin? [00:04:23] Ron DeSantis: I haven't talked to him about it, but I know just it's one thing to have a jurisdiction that may have unfavorable policies just generally. Look, I don't agree with every policy and every place I go either. But to be targeted personally by a politician like that, you know, I think that that is going to cause some second thoughts. [00:04:42] Speaker 1: I was just in your state. Every time I go down there, I'm amazed at the growth. I mean, there's new skyscrapers going up left and right. I think the knock would be matching the infrastructure, the roads, the trains, the new Brightline private train service. The schools matching the infrastructure to the people. You've got a chance to speak to Wall Street right now. Many of those firms have or are thinking about moving down to Florida or moving some people down. It could be Jacksonville, right? There's some huge operations there. What is your message about building out the infrastructure to support those people that our CEOs watching right now might be thinking about? [00:05:13] Ron DeSantis: Well, some of it is like what I said. We did our moving Florida forward. So you're talking seven, eight billion in infrastructure spending that a lot of these projects weren't going to start till next decade. And so we made the decision to do that. It's a little easier once you get north of Miami because there's more room to build in terms of the roads and stuff. Miami is a little more difficult, although we are doing some stuff down there. So that's one. The other thing is, is, you know, not all of this is necessarily going to be government. So, for example, some of these like real high net worth people, the CEOs and all these people, they want a certain type of private school, right? We have school choice. We have universal. You can take money, go to any private you want. But they want to replicate some of the things that they've seen. In New York City. Yeah. And you know what? People like Stephen Ross are doing that. Now, that's not us doing it. It's not really government's role for the private, but they're doing it because there's a demand to do it. So I think, Florida, you know, you have an open field and fair chance to do well for yourself. You have good policy. It's very stable policy. So people can make those decisions to do those big type of private investments. [00:06:15] Speaker 1: Maybe not Ken Griffin directly, but have you been in touch with, are you in touch with current Wall Street or other CEOs of other types of companies about relocating? [00:06:23] Ron DeSantis: So I'm in touch with a lot, just not even about, hey, relocate, but just I see these people. Right. And I would say most of them say we're going to continue to grow our footprint in Florida. It may not mean they're going to like leave New York City entirely or some of that, but they are growing footprint. I mean, we've seen that in West Palm Beach, which happened. Stephen Ross has been a big part of that. Some of the companies that have gone massive numbers of people. So I think you'll continue to see that. But it isn't like, you know, for us, you don't have to like say I'm leaving New York entirely like it is what it is. But where are you choosing to grow? And I think they're choosing to grow in places like Texas and Florida. Right. Yeah. I want to talk about the energy side of the story, because that's kind of what I do. [00:07:02] Speaker 1: So data centers, obviously a huge growth story. Where do you come in on that? What policies can you implement in Florida that would accelerate? You have a lot of solar there, a lot of solar power in Florida. What policies do you implement that would get more data centers to be built in Florida? [00:07:18] Ron DeSantis: Well, first, do you want them? Yeah, no. So I think there's a lot of a lot of concern in Florida because we have a lot of environmentally sensitive areas. I'm doing Everglades restoration, the biggest restoration in history. We're also concerned about electricity rates being raised on customers because the data centers take up a lot. I mean, the reality is you have this much capacity, this much demand. If you double the demand, unless you all of a sudden double the capacity, you are going to see rates go up. So I'm going to sign a bill probably this month, which is basically going to say consumers and individual rate payers are held harmless if there's a data center. So if a data center is going to do a deal with FP&L, FP&L cannot raise rates on customers because at the end of the day, costs are the number one issue facing everyday Americans as well as Floridians. I mean, California, I saw $6.40 gas. I couldn't imagine what that is. But just, you know, in the last two months across the country, gas has gone up. Some of these things have gone up. So we want to make sure we're protecting the rate payers for any of those projects. [00:08:26] Speaker 1: So, yeah, FPL, NextEra Energy is some of these stocks that our viewer knows. So would you say then? [00:08:31] Ron DeSantis: But here's the issue with the data centers that I have not liked around the country. Some of them aren't paying tax. They're getting property tax abatements. I would do the opposite. I mean, that would be these are very wealthy companies, right? They're doing a build which creates some economic utility. But once it's done, it employs a very small number of people. Obviously, it's not very popular with with grassroots people on both the left and right. And so what I would say is, why would you give them no property tax? I mean, we're working on getting rid of homestead property tax for our residents. I would rather have tax savings go to individual homeowners, for example. Well, I don't understand why some of these states have given those types of arrangements. [00:09:11] Speaker 1: I was going to say, well, then, so how do you make sure that the people in a city don't pay more on electricity? You go to the not only the FPL. I'm going to sign a bill. So basically. So Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, whoever it may be. I'm not I'm just not picking on one company. They have to pay exactly pay full freight. [00:09:29] Ron DeSantis: You pay for what you use and ultimately. Now, look, in fairness, Florida has not been a place where we have had a hyperscale data center yet. And I think part of it is we have tropical weather. There could be interruptions in service. And so I get why. But then from my perspective as governor, when we have a storm, I work hard to get the lights back on for people. Right. What would it be like if you had a data center get power back on before our Florida homeowners? That wouldn't be good. I think Florida is a unique situation, but I'm confident the bill I'm signing Floridians are not going to be negatively impacted. And it may mean they don't do data centers in Florida. But at the end of the day, I do not want to see a 20, 30 percent increase on people because of the data center. [00:10:09] Speaker 1: Would you take a post in the Trump cabinet? [00:10:12] Ron DeSantis: People are always asking me like, well, I had to ask. It's an economic. Well, here's what I'd say. Big story around your name. Well, I got to run through the tape with this job I have now. It's a great job. We've done a lot. I've got more that I want to do. No one's ever asked me to do anything and I've never asked to do anything. So I think a lot of it is just, you know, I'm one of the more well-known Republicans in the country. So I think people like to throw it in. Reality is people are going to run with my name more than they'll run with somebody who's maybe never held elected office in terms of, oh, are they in the mix or that? So some of that is just stuff that gets passed around. But the reality is we've been a good partner with the Trump administration on a variety of issues and we'll continue to do that. [00:10:49] Speaker 1: And then what's your status on redistricting? A lot of talk about what happened in Virginia. People say, is Florida going to have the same outcome? Where do we stand with the votes and what may happen there? [00:11:01] Ron DeSantis: So the legislature passed it last week and I signed it today. So that is the law of the land. I didn't know today. Yeah, so we signed a new map today. And part of it was our previous map was impacted by the Calais decision. I had said that many months ago. So we knew this day was going to happen. We were prepared for it. We did it and that is now law of the land. [00:11:20] Speaker 1: Governor Ron DeSantis of the great state of Florida. Governor DeSantis, thank you very much for joining us here on CNBC. Thank you. Appreciate you having me. Really appreciate your time. Thank you, sir.