About Me, and What led me Here

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If we were sitting across from each other at a kitchen table, this is probably where I would begin.

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Work came early for me. I grew up in a family of hotel and restaurant employees, and at an early age I used to stand on a milk crate and roll hot dogs and flip hamburgers for my Nana and Grandpa Charlie at a concession they had at the Hollywood Beach Hotel — while my mother worked the counter and my dad was a bellman in Bal Harbor. My first paid job was as a delivery boy for The Miami News. I was about eleven or so. At thirteen or fourteen, I began service jobs. As a young teenager, there were hours spent in the hotels along the north end of Miami Beach. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it was steady and it was honest. You showed up. You did what needed to be done. You learned how people liked to be treated. And over time, it became clear that most of life runs on simple things — reliability, respect, and effort.

 

I dropped out of High School at the end of 11th grade to enter the United States Air Force at the close of the Vietnam War. It felt like the right next step. Thanks to the incredible gentlemen with whom I worked, I actually got my GED high school diploma five months before my High School class actually graduated. As a Command and Control Specialist, the work required attention, steadiness, and an understanding that decisions carry consequences. There were no dramatic speeches. There was just responsibility. As much as I loved my job and as deeply as I respected the men with whom I worked, military life was not for me. And when an opportunity to separate from military service arose, I took it, preferring civilian life.

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After military service, I went back to the hospitality business for a few years before a friend had talked about the satisfaction of being a laborer on construction sites. I joined him on a site nearby where the two of us lived and worked my way from laborer to eventually lead layout carpenter, having supervised a couple jobs as a field foreman — and this was all in South Florida. Buildings go up piece by piece. Measurements matter. Preparation matters. If something is off by even a small amount at the beginning, it becomes much larger later. That lesson tends to stay with a person.

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I met and married the woman of my dreams, not realizing until then that that’s who she was. She was a nursing student while I was still working in construction. With her encouragement and support, I went to practical nursing school and actually leveraged that education and experience into an opportunity to attain my Bachelor of Science degree in nursing and become a registered nurse.

 

Medical cardiac critical care units became daily life. There are few places where human vulnerability is more visible than in a hospital room. Decisions are rarely simple. Tradeoffs are constant. People want certainty, but what they often receive is explanation. And explanation, when offered honestly, is usually enough.

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I eventually left the bedside, attained a certificate in paralegal studies from a local college, and began consulting on medical matters for attorneys. Medicine and law intersected in ways that required careful reading, careful thinking, and careful words. Over time, a pattern could be seen. Whether in uniform, on a job site, at a bedside, or reviewing documents — the same principle applied: the work should be visible, understandable, and accountable.

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Which brings me to something that feels increasingly important.

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In this country, the people are supposed to be the ones giving consent to be governed. But informed consent requires information. Not spin. Not summaries written after decisions are already made. Not fragments clipped for effect.

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In most areas of life, that would never be considered acceptable. Business owners meet with their teams. Boards of directors gather regularly. Adjustments are made before problems compound. Conversations are had while decisions are still forming.

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It has often seemed that government should be no different.

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If entrusted with the presidency, it would be my intention for a pool reporter to be present throughout the workday — from beginning to end — with the only exception being matters of national security. The routine work of governance, the discussions, the disagreements, the weighing of competing needs — those things should not be hidden.

 

This level of transparency would be important not only in the Oval Office, but across every Cabinet department and with every Secretary.

 

The only information not immediately available to the media would be national security–specific matters. The work of governing — the deliberation, the tradeoffs, the reasoning — should be visible wherever it occurs.

 

I refuse to believe the American people are incapable of understanding complexity. Quite the opposite. I believe they are more than capable. The difficulty is not intelligence, it is time. When a person works 40, 60, or even 70 hours a week just to be able to pay the bills while raising children and still needing to get the rest that is vital to survival, there’s not much room left to chase down fragmented information. The government is responsible for ensuring that citizens have information in a form that is readily accessible.

 

If the press were given real access, perhaps weekly summaries might emerge that help people follow along. What was discussed. What concerns were raised. Why one request could not be granted because it conflicted with someone else’s safety. How conclusions were reached.

 

That kind of transparency is not about spectacle. It is about trust.

 

I’ve never really had much interest in issuing orders or delivering grand declarations or commands. Conversation has always seemed more productive. Listening has always seemed wiser. And if something cannot be explained plainly, it may not yet be understood well enough. In nursing, having a patient teach back a procedure is the way to assure yourself that information has actually been communicated — whether it’s the reason for a medication, how it is taken or given, or even how to use crutches. Nurses teach so that patients can teach back. We need that level of clarity from our government every time.

 

This campaign is not built on anger. It is not built on grievance. It is built on the quiet belief that government can function more openly, more steadily, and more competently — and that the American people deserve to see it working in real time.

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And if we were still sitting at that kitchen table, I would probably pause about here — not to be sure I persuaded you to see things my way, but simply to ask what you think about what we’ve been discussing, because your perspective and your insights matter.