Sumter County GOP Chair Mark Morgan moderated the hour-long panel. Ahead of the event, a small group from the Florida Republican Freedom Assembly protested Razack’s candidacy  because he is Muslim. Razack later told VoxPopuli that he’s received death threats as a result of the heightened rhetoric around his campaign and that he’d been advised by the Orange County Sheriff’s Office not to campaign door-to-door for his safety. He has hired his own security.

Gunning for Obamacare

Baker, who got politically outplayed into the 2024 loss of the $168,000 a year Lake County Property Appraiser job he’d held for three terms, reminded the crowd of his conservative bona fides.

A U.S. Army veteran and state legislator who served in both the Florida House and Senate from 2000 to 2012, Baker said he was “considered the most conservative member of the Florida Senate at the time.” He touted the bills he filed to support small businesses, veterans, gun rights and against the Affordable Care Act and abortion.

“Dan Webster and I stood shoulder to shoulder, sponsoring, co-sponsoring a pro-life agenda, year after year when we served in the Senate together,” he said.

Razack told attendees that his family immigrated from India in 1967 when he was 3 years old — legally, he emphasized — and that becoming a U.S. citizen was akin to winning the lottery. He said he favors “limited government and accountability” and joined the Tea Party after the Affordable Care Act decimated his neurosurgery practice.

When Morgan, the moderator, asked candidates which regulations they wanted to jettison, Razack didn’t have to think twice. He wants to see Obamacare repealed and the “waste and fraud” stripped from Medicare and the “middleman insurance companies that deliver these Medicare supplement [plans]” curbed.

“ I've seen over-regulation and bad policies destroy our healthcare system. That's why I'm running to be your congressman,” Razack told the crowd. “The number-one employer in District 11 is healthcare. The most fraud and abuse in government is healthcare. That's what I'm running on.”

Baker is keen to ax the Department of Education and the estate tax. “No taxation without respiration,” he quipped.

And he reminded attendees that he worked to get a measure on the ballot that would exempt Floridians from buying health insurance under the Obamacare mandate if they didn’t want to purchase it. He said that when the Florida Supreme Court struck that down, he “led the effort” to remove two of the justices.

“We failed in that effort but it was worth the fight,” he said.

Wilkins — who described himself as a Marine veteran who runs a private school, animation company and a “faith-based production studio that’s taking on big issues with a Christian perspective, like the transgender athlete issue we all just dealt with” — also has Obamacare in his sights.

“Our premiums have tripled, quadrupled. Our deductibles are through the roof, and it's unacceptable,” he said. “We need to go back and look at the risk pool. We need to look at the amount of co-pays. We need to put transparency in place. But at the same time, we need to look at some of these doctors that are being driven out of the business with being over-regulated and under-compensated by the system. So to increase care, we need to continue to increase the amount of doctors. But we sent the Republicans up in 2016 to repeal and replace. They did neither. We haven't heard anything about it in 10 years.”

Wilkins was the only candidate at the forum throwing jabs — at Democrats (“We saw last week more radical Democrat socialists aka communists [getting] elected across this country”) and his fellow Republicans. He described Baker as a “go along to get along politician and an establishment guy, and Washington is already full of those and nothing’s getting done.” He suggested that Strada, who put $5 million into his race, was attempting to “buy the district” and would “probably get the endorsement of the postal union for the amount of mailers that are going out.” He called Islam a “cancer” in front of Razack who is Muslim and told the crowd to make sure that the “right Republican conservative Christian” wins the primary.

Making housing affordable again

Candidates weighed in on housing affordability, a critical issue across every election this year.  

Razack said he wanted to stop large foreign and domestic corporations from purchasing vast numbers of American homes.

“That makes homes unaffordable,” he said. “You can't compete with giant corporations when they buy thousands of neighborhoods all together and set their own prices. That's price fixing. How can new couples, first-time homebuyers buy into the market with that problem?”

He also suggested tax breaks for first-time home buyers and small business owners. “Seventy percent of all employees are employed by small businesses. That’s who we have to protect, and that’s how we cut the cost of living and control the cost of living because that's what matters, having Americans live their lives comfortably.”

Wilkins advocated for dropping mortgage rates. “You drop the rate one point, and it can lower the payment $800 a month and  also help corporate lenders let builders and suppliers borrow money to continue to keep the supply growing. We need to let the free market do its job, open up competition, and let homes get built, and increase the ability for new homebuyers to get into the home market.”

Baker, who urged everyone to vote yes on the property tax reform amendment, also supports reducing mortgage rates. He added that reducing home insurance rates would improve affordability as well.

“There’s so many things we can do to manage and control insurance rates or dramatically reduce the cost,” he said. “All that’s built into the cost of affordability when it comes to your house.”

“I don't think there's a problem with supply. We have plenty of homes that are fixer-uppers, and we have plenty of people who want to buy them. They just can't afford the compliance costs, the permits,” Palomo, the whistleblower, said. She wants to remove regulations that make home repairs cost prohibitive.

The new law House Bill 803, which went into effect July 1, does exactly that, removing permits for home repairs under $7,500 and reducing inspection fees.

Protecting Social Security

The Social Security Trust Fund is projected to be depleted by 2034, according to the 2026 report from the Social Security Board of Trustees — a timeframe, trustees noted, that was accelerated by Trump administration policies on immigration and the One Big Beautiful Bill. Trustees have recommended two plans to keep Social Security funded for the next 75 years:

• Cut benefits immediately for current and future recipients by 25 percent while increasing payroll taxes.
• Cut benefits immediately for those who become eligible in 2026 by 30 percent, but maintain levels for those already receiving benefits, while also further increasing payroll taxes.
  

Morgan asked candidates how they would protect Social Security. Both Baker and Wilkins — who likened Social Security to a “Ponzi scheme by the United States government for the better part of 50 years” — backed investing funds to “grow Social Security and Medicare so people don’t get some piddly return on their 40 years of pay-in.”

Without citing a source, Wilkins claimed the country "had an influx of 20 to 50 million illegal aliens  that were getting better benefits than our seniors who worked hard their entire lives." According to the American Immigration Council, however, undocumented workers paid $26.2 billion into the Social Security Trust Fund in 2023 and the majority do not see those benefits.

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Strada, who has racked up numerous endorsements from state and national figures, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise and state legislators Rep. Doug Bankson, Sen. Keith Truenow, Sen. Jason Brodeur and Rep. Taylor Yarkosky, did not elaborate much in the way of policy or his platform during the forum beyond that he’s a “businessman not a politician” and that he would be “proud to serve with the greatest president in my lifetime and that’s President Donald J. Trump.”

Strada told the crowd no fewer than three times: “ I sign the front of the paycheck, not the back of paychecks.”

His plan for protecting Social Security is “Don’t worry about it.”

Strada said,  “You worked hard all your life. Social Security is the promise we made to you, and I promise you we will keep that promise. You will get your check.”

He offered no specifics.