Candidate Profile: Carey Baker

A self-described “Ronald Reagan Republican,” Iraq War veteran and Mount Dora gun shop owner, Carey Baker served in the Florida Legislature from 2000 to 2012 as a representative and a senator, writing legislation to support small businesses, veterans and gun owners and against the Affordable Care Act and abortion.

Baker, 63, told attendees at a recent candidates forum hosted by the Sumter County Republicans that he was “considered the most conservative member of the Florida Senate at the time” and that he was “relentless in defense of the Second Amendment.”

Baker was Lake County’s property appraiser for three terms until 2024 when he was politically outplayed at his own game during the candidate qualifying period and lost the election when his name did not appear on the ballot.

Married with two daughters, Baker traces his family lineage back to Edward Baker, a Puritan who arrived in Boston in 1630. Baker said his fourth great-grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War while his fifth great-grandfather voted to ratify the U.S. Constitution as a Massachusetts delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1788.

“Our country, the Constitution didn't spring out of nowhere. We were here carving out this wilderness for 150 years before the Revolution,” Baker said during an interview. “So, it all means something to me.”

Running in the Aug. 18 Republican Primary, Baker faces Orlando neurosurgeon and law professor Dr. Nizam Razack; Ivette Paolomo, a former farmer and whistleblower from Bushnell; businessman Joe Strada of Lake Mary; and Christian media producer Tim Wilkins of Windermere. The winner will face the Democratic Primary winner in November.

The district encompasses parts of Orange County (including Winter Garden, Ocoee, Oakland and Windermere) and Lake and Sumter counties. U.S. representatives serve for two years and earn $174,000 annually.

Baker did not submit responses to the questionnaire from the News Collaborative of Central Florida, but VoxPopuli interviewed him on national issues. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Do you support the Iran War?

 I believe ultimately the Middle East will be safer, Europe will be safer and America will be safer. because we have dramatically reduced Iran’s ability to develop and produce missiles and rockets that easily can reach the Middle East and Europe. We have easily stopped the further enrichment of uranium for nuclear weapons.  Then you have to believe them at their word when they say, "Death to Israel. Death to America." They're saying those words, those are their words, not ours, and they're building weapons that could produce that result. There is no greater destabilizing force in the Middle East than Iran.

 I'm not for these forever wars.  I am not for boots-on-the-ground, long-term deployment. But I am for a muscular defense of our national interest. And if that means going into a place like Iran and taking out their capabilities in the manner we have, that's not only in our national defense, but also just serves greater humanity, I am 100 percent in support.

Have the tariffs grown our economy and reduced our cost of living?

For every tax, there is a reasonable limit. There is a limit to property taxes, there's a limit to income taxes, there's a limit to sales tax and there's a limit to tariffs. I believe they should all be as low as possible so they do not adversely affect free trade, free enterprise. I don't like to use tax policy to push my favorite economic agenda. I believe it should all be fairly applied and let the free market decide the winners and losers.

But I do think the president has the ability and the right to use tariffs to as a negotiating tool. I do not support raising our tariffs to a high level as a protectionism method. But I absolutely support them being used strategically.  President Trump is using this, I believe, as a negotiating tool to address that. I hope the goal is that then we lower those tariffs.

I have no problem with tariffs on Chinese products and goods because I think we're dealing with the enemy, quite frankly.  Our national interests are now at risk because we have allowed China to dominate certain sectors of our economy, and I think that has to stop.  One way of making it stop is tariffs. So all my philosophical waxing about tariffs needing to be low, that doesn’t apply to China.  

What is your position on Ukraine?

 I went on two NATO missions to Ukraine back in '06 and ’07. Then I went less than two years ago with a missionary group and traveled from one end of the country to the other.  I'm very familiar with Ukraine, its history, its people, its politics, and I can talk a lot about all that.  It is in our national interest to have stability and no war in that area.

Ukraine has flaws, but all of Ukraine's flaws are fixable. All their shortcomings are redeemable. Ukraine is poised to be a wealthy, stable economic giant in that area. And we can't allow Russia to win. Ukraine needs to win. So what does winning mean? I don't have all the answers, but at a minimum, I believe Ukraine should possess Crimea. I believe that Ukraine should at least possess the land back to the 2014 borders when Russia annexed part of Eastern Ukraine. To me, that would be the compromise. Allow Russia to keep what they stole back in 2014, but Ukraine retain Crimea and the rest of that area.

 I like to take my cues in the Ukrainian situation from Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland. Those countries understand better than most just the brutality that the Russians can inflict on people. They are highly supportive of Ukraine because they have lived under communism.

 Do you support the U.S. remaining in NATO?

 Yes. But I also support President Trump pushing them. We all know how President Trump operates, and people think it's rash and disruptive, and maybe it is. But it might be by plan.

NATO would not have made the efforts to fulfill their military commitments had President Trump not used a big stick in his rhetoric and in our resources to move them in that direction.

I believe we should belong to NATO because it's in our own national interest. It's in America's interest that we have the use of bases throughout Europe. It's in America's interest that there is a stable Europe. My uncle Harry Baker died in World War I. He died in France fighting World War I. He died because it was an unstable Europe. And then my father, World War II, fought, and was hit by two German military rounds less than 100 miles from where his uncle was killed in World War I. And so we've fought too many wars, lost too many people because of a unstable Europe. It is in our national interest that there is peace in Europe, peace in the world, but particularly in Europe. And so it is in our national interest to stay involved in NATO.

 At a Republican candidates forum, you mentioned that you wanted to dismantle the Department of Education.  How should public schools be taken care of?

 If you look in the Constitution, there's a little section that lists all the powers of government, powers of Congress, none of them say provide for the common education.  One could make an argument that education in the grade school levels especially has diminished since we've had a Department of Education. Do I blame them? No. But did it happen? Yes. So did they help, reverse or stop that loss? No. So here would be a compromise. We could take some of that money that's currently funding the Department of Education and just block grant it. We just divide it out based on population or student population in the state and give out block grants. We could probably reduce the budget by half or more, turn the rest into block grants, give that to the state. But do we need a federal education program? No.

Would you support a national abortion ban?

I would.  Government has the right to protect your life. If you believe an unborn child is a life, like I do, then consequently, government has a right to protect that life, just like it protects yours and mine. So that's the sort of the principle philosophical way of looking at it. Am I okay with each state deciding for themselves? Well, yes, because I believe in a federal system. So do I believe that Supreme Court made the correct decision with Dobbs? Yes. But if there was a national bill to ban abortion nationally, would I do it? I’d have to answer yes.

Under a national ban, would you be in favor of punishing the doctors or punishing the women?

I  don't think we'd ever want to punish the women because they're the victims in this, in my opinion. Victims of their circumstance, whether it's economic, whether it's their social environment in which they live in. I think there's zero reason to ever punish the woman. But we do punish those that are financially benefiting from that. So that would be abortion providers, or pharmaceutical companies or medical providers.

If a woman travels to a state where abortion is legal, would she be guilty of trafficking?

Once again, I would hold the woman harmless. I would be an advocate right now telling you and God and everyone that I would not hold the woman responsible.

There are people who object to some types of contraception, like IUDs, which can prevent implantation of a fertilized egg, or the morning after pill, which can delay ovulation, Where do you stand on contraception?

I’m okay with that.  Once we have an embryo developing, I believe life has begun and life needs to be protected. So anything pre-embryo, it’s okay.

Do you want to see the Supreme Court re-evaluate same-sex marriage?

 As a Christian, I don't support gay marriage. I would support any contractual, civil-type stuff. I only support marriage between a man and woman, because that's what's written in my Bible, and that's what I believe.  If the Supreme Court speaks, then I stand up and salute. Does that mean that is the final say? No. That's not the final say. There could still be additional legal challenges. Congress could act one way or the other. There's been lots of horrendous Supreme Court decisions in the past that thankfully are no longer the law of the land. If there's a case, I'd like to see the Supreme Court take a look at it again.

You’re a big supporter of the Second Amendment.  Are there any gun safety proposals that you would consider?

No, because none of them work. Never have worked. They’ve enacted many gun control/gun safety laws particularly in the big cities, in other states, and did they ever have the effect they wanted? No, they had the opposite effect. In the cities that have adopted gun control in the past, crime has just gone through the roof. In the states that have the most liberal, I love to use that word, the most liberal gun laws, meaning the less gun laws, so we've had the least amount of crime.

[Ed note: States without basic gun safety laws (background checks, safe storage requirements, Extreme Risk laws and rejections of Stand Your Ground and permit less carry laws) have gun death rate that’s two and a half times higher than states with those protections, according to a study done by Every Town for Gun Safety. The Rand Corp. found substantial research to demonstrate that laws preventing children's access to guns reduce firearm homicides and assault injuries while concealed carry and stand your ground laws increase firearm homicides and violent crime.]

What do we do about mass shootings and still support the Second Amendment?

 To me, it's all about punishment. The misuse of a firearm in a crime, the punishments should be so great, so strict, so horrendous, that those people will never, ever consider picking up a firearm to use it in the commission of a crime. If I were in charge of everything, it would be so brutal, the punishment, that criminals would fear using a firearm in the commission of a crime. And if we do that, I think we wouldn't have crime. A lot of times the majority of these mass shootings are criminal or are violent gangs shooting each other and there's more than two or three people involved, and they call it a mass shooting.

[Ed note: According to the Gun Violence Archive, a mass shooting involves four or more people shot, not including the shooter. There have been 311 mass shootings in the U.S. so far in 2026, according to Mass Shooting Tracker. ]

 Who won the 2020 election?

Joe Biden did.

Criticism of Israel after the Gaza War is being seen as antisemitic; at the same time antisemitism is rising in this country. What do you think?

 The movement against the Jewish faith and Israel has gotten quite broad, and it is not good. It is not a good movement. I think there's plenty of things that we can legitimately criticize about Israel as it comes to their government and government policy because that's all fair game. But it seems that there is a growing number of Americans that are adopting antisemitic beliefs, that Jewish people are inherently manipulative and bad for America and bad for the world, and that is a horrendous, horrible mindset that is growing in this nation.

 One of the things Congressman Dan Webster always did for our area was bring back appropriations. What appropriations would you push for?

 What I won't do is just bring back appropriations just for appropriation's sake. Every appropriations that I would fight for has to be aimed at a problem. It has to meet public scrutiny and transparency: What is this money for? Is there a benefit to the community? Is there a benefit to the national interest? I am not just a “bring home the bacon” guy.  I want to be able to justify every dollar that I bring back.  I'd like to track what grants, what federal programs are now being spent in our district, and how we can do better.

Are we  ceding the renewable energy market and the electric vehicle market to China?

 I have a different take on that.  Solar should only be used where it works. Solar can never replace base power production. Base power production is 24/7 production. Literally, in any given day, there's probably only about five hours of peak solar, five hours out of 24, where solar's really producing anything. Wind is almost non-existent in the state of Florida. You have to have 12 miles an hour wind for 10 hours a day to make it work. So wind is not even an option. Not to ruin our Sunshine State motto, but really we are a very cloudy state, and that affects solar production. So I'm not a big fan of forcing solar. I'm not a big fan of forcing wind where it's not economically feasible.

 I'm all about traditional energy sources. I'm not a big global warming or climate change guy. Natural gas is an easy one. We have to go back to nuclear. We have to re-adopt nuclear for base productions. Once we remove the regulatory cost burdens, once these new plants, latest technology, the cost of producing nuclear plants become much less. There's no emissions. The amount of nuclear waste is minuscule.They have to be sited appropriately. New technology allows more options in siting that are less reliant on water. So I believe that we should a- adopt nuclear power for base production and only use wind and solar where it actually works. And I think that will help provide energy for the future.