If you’re in Florida House District 38, support Nik Dean in the midterms. Nik’s clear-eyed view of the economic problems Floridians face makes him the obvious choice in this House race.
Lower the Cost of Living
It’s no secret that costs have ballooned out of control since Trump’s second inauguration. As of this writing, since January 2025, food costs are up 4.6%, gas prices are up a whopping 39.1%, and healthcare costs are projected to jump 10% or more next year.
That’s after last year’s budget reconciliation slashed ACA subsidies and Medicaid spending. And some of the biggest impacts of the OBBBA are set to take effect after the midterms.
For example, Medicaid recipients will be forced into new cost-sharing requirements that, according to the Center for American Progress, “could cost a family of four living on only $33,000 per year up to $1,650 in new, mandatory out-of-pocket costs.”
Floridians need meaningful relief from the impacts of Washington’s and Tallahassee’s mismanagement.
We need a break from tariffs, inflation, and a challenging job market worsened by DOGE.
We need government that honors our efforts to improve our own lives by ensuring that the things outside our control don’t get in the way of our hard work.
We need, as Nik Dean puts it, “practical representation.”
To that end, Nik looks at more than tax shifts or chipping away at a few costs while allowing big business to profit while workers, our families, and senior citizens are left behind. Instead, Nik looks at what can be done on a variety of fronts.
Nik knows that supporting a robust middle class means supporting small businesses and employers that offer good pay. His plans to address the cost of living include state tax incentives for businesses that share profits with its employees or provide other forms of equity in the company.
This sets up the relationship between worker, employer, and government so everyone benefits.
· Workers earn more for the effort they put into the company, encouraging hard work and loyalty.
· Employers experience less turnover—and costs associated with turnover—while paying less to the government.
· Government, in turn, lowers its spending on services for underpaid employees—constituents whose hard work has earned them a living but who struggle to afford basic necessities.
Nik would also rein in hikes on fees and taxes that add up and threaten families’ and seniors’ financial stability. He’s a candidate who understands that cost of living is a serious issue without just one factor driving increases.
Complex problems deserve clear-headed examination and the willingness to consider multiple approaches, and Nik’s platform shows that awareness.
Expand Access to Care
Two aspects of the affordability crisis impact everyone, whether directly or indirectly: healthcare and childcare. Even for those who don’t have young children, the difficulty working parents face in finding childcare ripples out to the rest of the economy.
But let’s look at healthcare first. Everyone needs healthcare at some point in their lives.
But with the Trump administration threatening affordable healthcare, we need leaders who see the need for consistent, reliable funding for modern medicine so that people can access it in their time of need. When seniors are skipping medication doses or foregoing prescriptions altogether because of unaffordable drug costs, the need for change is shouting from the rooftops.
Nik wants the transparent, patient-centered system we know we need—for our health and for our household finances.
He would increase Medicaid reimbursement rates, which would give healthcare providers an incentive to take on more patients who use Medicaid, increasing their access to care. He also wants to increase funding for community healthcare clinics. Such initiatives would ensure healthcare providers have enough money to cover their own costs, which will benefit everyone they serve.
Childcare costs have also climbed—to the point where affordable childcare can be out of reach for working parents.
In Florida, 15.3% of working parents have turned down work because of this problem. Their loss of income—almost $10 billion—ripples throughout the economy in the form of purchases they can’t make. That translates to money that doesn’t travel through local businesses and to other working families.
These working parents’ former employers feel the loss too. They’re hit with almost $5 billion in turnover costs.
Nik knows that this problem, one way or another, impacts all of us too. And Florida House District 38 values its children and the top-notch education the Seminole County Public School district provides.
As a representative in the Florida State House, Nik would advocate for more affordable childcare. His plans include state tax breaks for employers who provide comprehensive healthcare and childcare.
This aligns with his overall approach to affordability: ensure all parties have an incentive to spend money where it can do the most good.
· Workers will be able to pursue employment according to where they have found the best economic opportunity for themselves.
· Their children will be cared for in a stable environment, not having the rug pulled out from under them as their parents shuffle them from one caregiver to the next.
· Employers will experience less turnover (and associated costs) and higher morale as working parents focus on their work, not on the next move they need to make to ensure their children’s wellbeing.
· Government—and we, the taxpayers who fund it—pay less to fill in the gaps left by employers who don’t pay their employees enough.
As with affordability in general, Nik understands that Floridians can’t keep kicking the can down the road. There are only so many price increases we can absorb.
We need a government that understands our need for our money to stretch further and responds to that need with the same care we show our own families—and provides solutions that allow us the ability to improve our own lives.
And we deserve a government that’s earned our trust.
That’s not the Republican-led government we currently have in Tallahassee. After over two decades of exercising power in Florida, the GOP has shown its inability to bring us sensible, real-world solutions to the issues we face.
Nik Dean vs. Emily Duda Buckley
Nik’s GOP opponent, Emily Duda Buckley, has a less clear take on affordability in Seminole County—and less robust solutions. As the Orlando Sentinel noted in its endorsement of Nik, Buckley’s “website offers almost no specifics about how she would tackle big issues like insurance, affordability and governmental integrity.”
What is on her website, though, is telling.
It includes an endorsement by Rick Scott, who helmed the company responsible for the largest Medicaid fraud in American history. As Florida governor, he lessened developers’ responsibility for the impact of their new developments, leaving Florida residents to shoulder the burden of infrastructure problems.
Another endorsement for Buckley comes from Blaise Ingoglia, Florida’s CFO whose questionable formulas for determining waste in government spending put local governments but not the state government he’s tasked with holding accountable in the crosshairs.
And U.S. Congressman Jimmy Patronis says Buckley will “keep our economy strong.”
This assessment of our economy is out of touch with Floridians faced with costs that are skyrocketing faster than our incomes can keep up with.
Buckley’s donors include the Florida House Republican Campaign and political committees connected to the oil, gas, and insurance industries. As a representative in the Florida House, would she truly represent her constituents in District 38, or would she work for these powerful interests that have already paid her?
Finally, Buckley’s own website reveals such a poor view of government that one wonders why she wants to join it.
“Government should live within its means like the rest of us,” it reads, as if government is simply another Florida household separate from yours and mine, rather than a tool that must be made to function on our behalf.
This statement reveals a misunderstanding of what government is meant to do. Taxes are meant to be spent for the people, to buy things for us that we can’t buy individually.
When our tax dollars are spent wisely, they can stretch further than if they stayed in our pockets. Pooling our money is how we make more cost-effective purchases: collectively.
But in Buckley’s view, is “the government” simply a black hole into which we must throw money, and our best bet is to throw less?
Where’s the option to spend taxpayer money wisely? Where’s the understanding that government can and should use that money to invest in its constituents’ wellbeing—to “promote the general Welfare,” as the U.S. Constitution says?
Floridians deserve representatives in the State House who want to use taxpayer money on behalf of the taxpayer.
We need job candidates who are serious about the requirements of the job and understand that knowing how to spend our money is a major requirement, not a talking point.
We need someone who respects the institution—the government—they seek to enter.
We need representatives who see government as the way society organizes itself and understands that simply shrinking it would diminish a tool we have for ensuring liberty and justice for all.
Vote for Nik Dean
For your next representative, elect someone who understands that our quality of life is at stake—someone committed to treating our money as a strategic investment.
Elect someone who knows the value of jobs that pay good wages. Nik Dean has made this an important part of his platform. He knows that households need enough money coming in that it increases our spending power, and jobs that pay well are a crucial part of protecting and growing the middle class.
Nik knows that government should work for the people it serves. This is a longstanding principle in our democratic republic, and voters are ready to remember it—and insist on it.
We can move on from the destruction that MAGA has wrought.
We can get back to treating our neighbors as our neighbors, showing respect to our communities by approaching our shared problems with real solutions.
We can choose better than the Florida GOP, which has allowed the cost of living to balloon out of control on their watch.
We can choose candidates like Nik Dean to represent us.