Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins knows something about refusing to die. When a bullet shattered his arm in combat, the former Green Beret did not wait for an evacuation team; he performed emergency surgery on himself to save the limb.
Now, days after a midterm election that Gov. Ron DeSantis described as a near extinction-level event for Republicans, Collins says his party needs to show that same instinct and rise from the field. 'Hard times happen. Warriors, leaders get up and fight. That's what we have to do now,' Collins, who has been dubbed the 'Chuck Norris of Florida politics' by DeSantis, told Fox News Digital in an interview after what he called the midterm bloodbath.
'This can be a definitive death blow if we allow it to be, but I believe in what we stand for,' he said, citing his faith in the Constitution and the founders' vision. 'I think we have to knuckle down, learn, apply this, and we have come out with a relentless dedication and fury to focus on what matters.'
While congressional Republicans scramble to assign blame for the devastating cycle, including the loss of Texas to Democrats, Collins argued that Florida offers the model for a comeback. Once a purple swing state, Florida has become the nation's largest red state on the 2028 map under DeSantis, a shift Collins witnessed as the governor's No. 2 during the final year of his two terms. 'Florida's been the road map,' he said. 'I think we've been what I call the conservative proving grounds.'
Collins acknowledged that even Florida's sizable Republican registration edge produced slim margins in the hostile environment, largely because no party affiliated voters broke heavily against the GOP. 'The biggest gap we had was that we didn't spend enough time communicating to our NPAs,' he said, adding, 'Losing sucks, winning is awesome: Let's get back to more winning.'
He pointed to his own first campaign for the state Senate in a Tampa district he said was far from a conservative juggernaut, running against the Tampa mayor's mother-in-law. 'We didn't talk to a single Republican out there. We only knocked NPA's and light D's, and we won by 10,' he recalled. 'In a community like Tampa, I didn't hide from my views.'
'What I realized is if you're honest with people, you agree on more than you don't, but you have got to be willing to step in there and have that conversation,' he said. 'As a party, we need to go back to being the party that welcomes folks in, a little bit more of a big tent, but we have to stand on our conservative values.'
Collins is termed out of office along with DeSantis in January, and he said he will weigh his future in state or national party politics. For now he is committing to nothing, telling supporters to 'Stay tuned.'
Returning to his military roots, Collins said Republicans must unite behind their eventual 2028 nominee the way the country came together after Sept. 11. 'When we rowed the boat, our enemy was fearful,' he said. 'What our enemy fears, what other nations fear is Americans coming together.'
He closed with a lesson from the early war on terror, when he said the United States spent two years fighting the last war. 'Let's not fight the last war. Let's understand the operational environment,' he said. 'And then we're going to have to move with a righteous fury.'
