Scott Jewett — 2026 Florida Libertarian Gubernatorial Platform Analysis

Source: scottjewett.com/meet-scott-jewett-1 (August 12, 2026)
Methodology: Each position evaluated against the liberty-rag corpus (~25,000 indexed passages from Rothbard, Mises, Hayek, Bastiat, Hoppe, Kinsella, Molinari, et al.), using the same rubric applied to the LPF Platform Analysis for direct comparability.

Overall Score: 42 / 100

This is a significant underperformance relative to the LPF's own platform (73/100). Jewett's platform is best characterized as center-left libertarian-adjacent — it borrows libertarian rhetoric ("personal freedom," "minimal government intervention") but repeatedly retreats to statist concessions on the most consequential questions. Multiple positions are explicitly designed to appeal to Republican and Democrat voters rather than to apply libertarian principles consistently. The platform's own framing — calling itself "Socially Liberal, Economically Conservative" and "Humanitarian Libertarianism" — signals the internal tension that drives the low score: Jewett is attempting to rebrand the LP for electoral palatability rather than articulating a principled libertarian platform.

Dimensional Breakdown

🏆 Top 5 Best Stances

1. Personal Freedoms / Abortion ⭐ 78/100

"Abortion should be a decision between a woman and her doctors, not the government."

This is the correct libertarian application of self-ownership to the abortion question — at minimum, it denies the state authority to interpose itself in a medical decision. Rothbard's position in The Ethics of Liberty is that the self-ownership principle prohibits the state from forcing a woman to remain pregnant (p. 98). Jewett's framing ("between a woman and her doctors, not the government") is clean and consistent with the NAP insofar as it removes the state as coercive actor. It avoids the philosophical rabbit hole of fetal personhood without retreating to a statist "pro-regulation" position.

What costs it points: It doesn't address the deeper libertarian argument that no government funding should flow to either abortion provision or abortion restriction — it is silent on Medicaid-funded abortions, which is the policy lever actually within a governor's control.

2. No Governmental Involvement in Religion ⭐ 76/100

"Religion is a personal choice and should have no governmental control or involvement."

Correct application of the separation between voluntary association and state coercion. Religious practice is an exercise of self-ownership and freedom of association — the state has no legitimate role in dictating, funding, or prohibiting it. This is consistent with Mises: "The state must not favor or support any of these groups [religious or ethical] in any way, but must maintain a hands-off policy toward them" (Liberalism, p. 55).

What costs it points: The statement is too brief to evaluate whether it extends to state funding of religious institutions, religious exemptions from regulation, or publicly financed chaplaincies — all of which are active policy questions a governor faces.

3. Healthcare Deregulation ⭐ 72/100

"We should strive to reduce the government's role in healthcare to foster competition, lower prices, and increase quality. This includes deregulating the health insurance market, allowing Florida residents to purchase plans from any provider regardless of location, and promoting price transparency in healthcare services."

The direction is correct. Murphy (Chaos Theory, p. 35) demonstrates that the AMA's licensing monopoly artificially restricts the supply of doctors and drives up costs, and that private voluntary certification organizations would emerge to perform quality assurance without state coercion. Allowing cross-state insurance purchases is a modest but real deregulatory step that increases competition. Price transparency is a market-enabling reform.

What costs it points: "Reduce the government's role" is far weaker than "eliminate the government's role." The platform doesn't address licensing abolition, FDA reform, or the Medicaid/Medicare programs that represent the core mechanism of government control over healthcare. Röpke (A Humane Economy, p. 175) acknowledges that even market-friendly economists feel compelled to retain some minimum of compulsory social security — Jewett appears to occupy this same uncomfortable middle ground.

4. Public Health / Vaccine Mandates / Lockdowns ⭐ 72/100

"I believe in fostering an environment where people can access all necessary information to make informed decisions about their health rather than mandating specific actions."

Principled opposition to vaccine mandates and lockdowns is a correct libertarian application of bodily autonomy. The platform explicitly grounds this in "individual choice" and "personal responsibility," which is consistent with the NAP: state-mandated medical procedures constitute forced physical intervention against a non-consenting person. The LPF's Pandemic plank scored 60 for framing this as "government must not overstep" — Jewett's framing scores slightly higher because it emphasizes the individual's right rather than the government's boundaries.

What costs it points: The caveat that "government should ensure information availability" implies a state role in health communication — which, in practice, means public health agencies, CDC coordination, and state-directed messaging, all of which are mechanisms of soft coercion.

5. Drug Decriminalization ⭐ 70/100

"[I believe in] criminal justice reform, including ending the War on Drugs, promoting sentencing reform, and reducing recidivism."

Ending the War on Drugs is among the most important libertarian positions on criminal justice. Rothbard is categorical: drug prohibition violates the individual's right to control their own body and mind (For a New Liberty, p. 122), and the LPF's own Victimless Crimes plank — which scored 95/100 — demands not just decriminalization but full legalization, pardons, and expungement. Jewett's position falls significantly short of that standard: "ending the War on Drugs" is vague enough to mean federal non-cooperation without full state legalization, and "promoting sentencing reform" could mean modestly lighter sentences rather than abolition of victimless-crime prosecutions.

What costs it points: No call for legalization of specific substances, no demand for pardons or expungement of existing convictions, no mention of ending civil asset forfeiture related to drug enforcement — all of which the LPF platform addresses explicitly.

⚠️ Top 5 Worst Stances (with Remediation)

1. Social Safety Nets — "Balanced Approach" 🔴 22/100

"I emphasize my belief in a balanced approach that respects individual liberty and the importance of providing help to those in need. I would propose measures to make existing programs more efficient and less prone to abuse, while encouraging private-sector and community-based solutions to complement government programs."

The Problem: This is the most consequential failure in the platform. Accepting the legitimacy of government welfare programs — and proposing to improve them rather than abolish them — contradicts the NAP directly. Government welfare is funded by coercive taxation, which Rothbard identifies as indistinguishable from theft: "The government confiscates the income of wage earners, and then, most people presume, it invests the money more wisely than they could themselves" (Man, Economy, and State, p. 957). Hülsmann's exhaustive analysis in Abundance, Generosity, and the State (p. 309) demonstrates that welfare programs produce perverse incentives that perpetuate the poverty they claim to cure — and that "making them more efficient" is structurally impossible because the incentive defects are intrinsic to the system, not a product of poor management.

The LPF's own Welfare plank (scored 80/100) called for replacing government welfare with voluntary private charity. Jewett explicitly wants government programs to complement private solutions — the inverse of the libertarian position.

2. Gun Control — Background Checks 🔴 28/100

"I uphold the right of individuals to bear arms as protected by the Second Amendment. However, I also believe in promoting responsible gun ownership, including thorough background checks and education programs, to ensure public safety."

The Problem: This is the most explicit internal contradiction in the platform. Jewett opens with an affirmation of the right to bear arms and then immediately endorses one of the most common mechanisms used to deny that right: background check requirements. The phrase "thorough background checks" is not a libertarian position — it is a state-administered screening system that creates a government permission slip for exercising a constitutionally recognized right.

The LPF platform scored 86/100 on firearms by calling for "unfettered" possession with the only restriction being private property owner preferences. Rothbard is explicit that "no physical object is in itself aggressive; any object, whether it be a gun, a knife, or a stick, can be used for aggression, for defense, or for numerous other purposes" (For a New Liberty, p. 140). Background check systems — especially the federal NICS system — result in thousands of false positives annually and deny arms purchases to individuals who have committed no crime.

The "Second Amendment" framing also anchors the right in a constitutional document rather than in natural law, which is the weaker foundation. The right to self-defense is pre-political, not document-dependent.

3. Military / Defense Spending — "Lean, Efficient Military" 🔴 30/100

"I would assert that while national defense is a crucial role of government, we should strive for a lean, efficient military that genuinely serves our national defense needs rather than engaging in endless overseas conflicts."

The Problem: As a state gubernatorial candidate, Jewett has essentially no authority over federal military spending or deployment — making this position largely performative. But its content is also problematic: "a lean, efficient military" accepts the premise that military spending and federal authority over defense are legitimate in principle, merely arguing for efficiency rather than questioning the framework.

More importantly, this framing uses the language of fiscal conservatism ("lean and efficient"), not libertarian principle. Rothbard and Hoppe argue that the state's monopoly on "defense" is precisely the mechanism that enables imperialism — an efficiently-run imperial military is not a libertarian improvement over a wasteful one. The real libertarian position on military is non-intervention, opposition to the military-industrial complex, and reduction rather than optimization.

For a Florida governor, the relevant issues are: the National Guard's deployment authority, state resistance to federal military commands, and state-level anti-conscription positions — none of which Jewett addresses.

4. Infrastructure — "Rigorous Safety Regulations" 🔴 30/100

"Rather than relying solely on government for infrastructure improvement, we should encourage private sector involvement, incentivizing businesses to invest in our state's infrastructure. I also support rigorous but fair safety regulations to ensure public safety."

The Problem: The first sentence points in a libertarian direction (private sector involvement); the second negates it. "Rigorous safety regulations" is a statist position — it maintains the state as the arbiter of what constitutes acceptable risk and imposes those determinations coercively on private actors and voluntary transactions. The libertarian alternative is liability: if private infrastructure causes harm, the responsible parties owe restitution under tort law. This provides stronger incentives for safety than regulatory compliance, which optimizes for box-checking rather than actual safety outcomes.

Rothbard in For a New Liberty (p. 242) argues explicitly that private provision of infrastructure through market mechanisms — including liability rather than regulation — produces superior outcomes at lower cost. Jewett's hybrid ("private investment + state regulation") is the worst of both worlds: it captures the public choice problems of regulation while claiming credit for market principles.

5. The "Humanitarian Libertarianism" / Branding Strategy 🔴 20/100

"I will deflect the curve from governmental control toward personal accountability without disrupting needed social programs." "The goal is to show that a Libertarian approach can offer practical solutions, blending the best aspects of the principles championed by Republicans and Democrats."

The Problem: This is less a policy position than a meta-position on political strategy — and it is the most anti-libertarian statement in the entire platform. Libertarianism is not the midpoint between Republican and Democrat positions; it is a logically independent tradition rooted in the NAP and self-ownership. The explicit goal of "blending" Republican and Democrat principles is a repudiation of the LP's theoretical foundations.

Bastiat's The Law opens by noting that "legal plunder" does not become just because it is consensual among the majority or popular across party lines. Oppenheimer (The State) distinguishes the "political means" (coercion) from the "economic means" (voluntary exchange) — and the entire project of "blending Democrat and Republican principles" is a project of choosing which form of political means to retain, not of transitioning to economic means.

Moreover, the explicit campaign strategy of targeting "undecided voters from the two major parties" — rather than building a principled coalition around libertarian ideas — produces exactly the platform incoherence we observe: gun control endorsed alongside gun rights, welfare retained alongside private charity, "lean military" alongside non-intervention.

🔍 Deep Dive: Homeowner's Insurance Reform (54/100)

"Less than 17% of Florida homeowner's premiums are paid out to homeowners to repair damaged homes. I will not permit insurance lobbies, attorneys, or giant insurance companies to steal our homes with mortgage contracts that are unenforceable and unfair." "Scott Jewett has begun drafting a legislative bill designed to stabilize homeowner insurance in the State of Florida."

This is the most developed policy area in the platform, and it is genuinely the most Florida-specific and relevant to a gubernatorial race. Florida's homeowner insurance crisis is real: the market has been distorted by a combination of litigation abuse, reinsurance costs, and Citizens Insurance's role as a state-backed insurer of last resort. Jewett's instinct to address it is correct.

What it gets right

• Market diagnostic is accurate: The 17% payout figure reflects genuine market dysfunction — excess litigation costs, inflated adjusting costs, and insurer fraud. Identifying the insurance lobby as a political obstacle is correct.
• Mortgage contract reform: Challenging mortgage contract terms that allow insurers to effectively void coverage through technicalities is a property-rights argument. Homeowners have a property interest in their insurance claims — enforcing contract terms strictly against insurer bad faith is consistent with libertarian tort principles.

What it gets wrong

• "Legislative bill to stabilize" — Stabilization through legislation is likely to mean price regulation, which is antithetical to libertarian economics. Rate regulation is precisely what has driven private insurers out of the Florida market, leaving Citizens as the dominant insurer. More regulation will not fix a problem caused by regulation.
• "Giant insurance companies steal our homes" — The rhetoric conflates contractual enforcement with theft. If insurers are violating their contracts, the remedy is tort law and contract enforcement — not new regulatory legislation. If the contracts themselves are unfair, the remedy is better consumer education and market alternatives — not government mandating contract terms.
• No mention of Citizens Insurance privatization — The single most libertarian move available to a Florida governor on insurance is privatizing or winding down Citizens Insurance Company, the state-backed insurer that crowd out private competition and creates systemic risk for taxpayers. Jewett doesn't mention it.

Honorable Mentions (Relatively Stronger Planks)

Dishonorable Mentions (Weakest Planks)

📊 Position-by-Position Scores

Core Identity & Philosophy

Economic Issues

Civil Liberties

Healthcare

Education

Public Safety & Justice

Environment & Infrastructure

Foreign Policy / Defense

Immigration

Summary Assessment

Scott Jewett's platform is best understood as a electoral-viability project rather than a libertarian policy document. Its explicit goal — stated multiple times in the platform text — is to appeal to undecided voters from both major parties by "blending" their principles. This produces a platform that is internally incoherent by design: it cannot consistently apply the NAP because doing so would alienate the very voters it is targeting.

The platform's strongest moments are on personal autonomy questions (abortion, religion, vaccine mandates, drug decriminalization) where Jewett applies individual liberty correctly. Its worst moments are where it accepts state authority as legitimate and merely proposes to administer it more efficiently (welfare, background checks, safety regulations).

Compared to the LPF's own platform (73/100): The LPF platform had stronger anti-statism, more developed property-rights positions, explicit opposition to victimless-crime prosecution with pardons/expungement, and far more radical positions on taxes and government size. Jewett's platform would score in the bottom third of any rigorous libertarian policy evaluation.

Strategic Observation

The platform's approach — marketing libertarianism as a "middle path" between Republicans and Democrats — has been tried repeatedly by LP candidates at all levels and has not produced electoral breakthroughs. The candidates who have made the LP competitive (e.g., Gary Johnson 2016 at 3.3% nationally) achieved that by clearly articulating the libertarian alternative, not by blending it with established-party positions. The internal incoherence Jewett's strategy produces (endorsing both gun rights and background checks) is more likely to confuse persuadable voters than to attract them.

Sources Consulted (via liberty-rag)