“We have to win, and they have to lose. And that’s what we’ve done,” DeSantis said as featured speaker at Heartland Institute Benefit Dinner
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Contact: Jim Lakely, EVP and Director of Communications
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CHICAGO, IL (Sept. 5, 2026) — Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told a packed ballroom at The Heartland Institute’s 42nd Anniversary Benefit Dinner that his eight years in Tallahassee amount to the most complete rout of the political left by any Republican administration in modern history. DeSantis also previewed a fall ballot fight he called “the biggest property tax rollback in the history of the state.”
Click here to see DeSantis’ speech (time-stamped) on The Heartland Institute’s YouTube page.
“There has never been a tenure in office in the modern history of the Republican Party that has more thoroughly defeated the left and the Democratic Party than we have in the free state of Florida over these last almost eight years,” DeSantis told supporters of The Heartland Institute at its benefit on September 3 at The Palmer House Hilton in Chicago. “Those are the facts.”
DeSantis said Florida voters will decide the property tax measure this November, calling it the next front in a fight against “government special interests.” He framed it as the latest in a string of policy victories he ticked off one by one:
“We beat Fauci on COVID. We beat the teachers’ unions on school choice. We beat SEIU on paycheck protection. We beat Disney on gender ideology. We beat the trial bar on tort reform. We beat George Soros on crime. We beat leftist academia on DEI and tenure reform. We beat BlackRock on ESG. We beat Biden on illegal immigration.”
“There’s only one way,” he said of confronting the left. “We have to win, and they have to lose. And that’s what we’ve done.”
In Chicago DeSantis touted his administration’s accomplishments:
- Cut the state budget for four consecutive years despite population growth and inflation, giving Florida the lowest per-capita state spending and fewest state government employees per capita in the country
- Retired 52 percent of all state debt accumulated in Florida’s history
- Enacted the nation’s first universal school choice program, now serving 1.7 million students
- Become the first state to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs from public universities, and enacted a law requiring tenured professors to undergo performance review every five years
- Reshaped the Florida Supreme Court from a 4–3 liberal majority to six conservative justices out of seven
- Designated the Muslim Brotherhood and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as foreign terrorist organizations, and signed a law banning the use of Sharia law in the state
- Said Florida alone accounts for nearly half of all state- and local-level illegal immigration arrests carried out nationwide since President Trump returned to office
- Won re-election in 2022 by 20 points — a 1.5-million-vote margin, the largest in a Florida governor’s race in state history.
DeSantis pointed to a shift in Florida’s voter rolls as evidence his approach is working. Democrats outnumbered Republicans in state registration by 300,000 when he took office in 2019. Today, DeSantis said, Republicans hold a 1.5-million-voter registration advantage.
“I got elected not to follow, but to lead,” he said. “I don’t need to look to a poll to see what people think. That’s not the relevant factor. The relevant factor is going to be what do they think when we’ve led and delivered.”
Drawing laughs from the Chicago audience, DeSantis offered what he called his governing cheat code: “One of the things I do is study very closely whatever is going on in California, New York and Illinois and then I do the exact opposite. And look what happens.”
The remarks came as DeSantis nears the end of his second and final term as governor, fueling speculation among attendees about his political future. Many expect him to run for the Republican nomination for president in 2028.
Steve Milloy, chairman of the Board of Directors of The Heartland Institute, introduced DeSantis by telling the audience that DeSantis “decides what he believes, explains why he believes it, and then governs accordingly.” And Milloy predicted the governor’s political fight is far from over.
“As Governor DeSantis approaches the conclusion of his second term in Florida, I suspect there are more than a few people in the room wondering what chapter comes next,” Milloy said. “Whatever that chapter may be, one thing seems certain: Ron DeSantis is not finished acting.”
DeSantis’s remarks capped an evening marking Heartland’s 42nd anniversary, which also featured actor and author Kevin Sorbo, libertarian author and podcaster Tom Woods, and Heartland Institute President James Taylor.
The Heartland Institute is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1984 and headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our website or call 312/377-4000.
Jim Lakely is the Vice President and Director of Communications of The Heartland Institute.
