Scott and Rachel Plakon, who succeeded her term-limited husband, have collectively spent over a decade in the Florida House. They had their chance to try to improve life in the Sunshine State, yet life in Florida has become unaffordable for far too many.
It’s time for Florida to move on from the Plakons. If you’re looking for a fighter who will stand up for your community and ensure your tax dollars go to supporting our quality of life, vote for Darryl Block.
Ensure We Can Make Ends Meet
Affordable housing in Central Florida has become a crisis. The National Low Income Housing Coalition names the Orlando area as the worst in the nation for this issue. . They also report that in Seminole County’s congressional district, which we share with part of Volusia County, “90% of extremely low-income renter households are severely cost burdened.”
Other basic necessities have ballooned in cost too. Grocery prices have increased by 30% since 2019, and Orlando is in the top six metropolitan areas for rising grocery costs.
Floridians keep working hard, adding jobs and trimming our budgets to pay the bills. We deserve a government that respects our work ethic and ensures economic fairness. We need leaders who embrace their responsibility to ensure our hard work pays off for us.
So what has our representative in the Florida State House done to address this crisis?
State Rep. Rachel Plakon’s own campaign website admits that “Floridians are having a hard time keeping up with rising prices.” Her big solution? Lower taxes.
Not ideas to increase our purchasing power.
Not ways to ensure our tax dollars make savvy collective purchases that individuals can’t buy on our own.
Just taking away from what we put into the collective pot—and no understanding that that tax money was meant to actually buy things of value for taxpayers.
And on a fun side note, Plakon’s first business was flipping houses. That’s right—our current representative in the Florida House made it her business to buy up houses and make them more expensive for the people who would live in them.
No wonder the cost of housing has ballooned under her watch.
On the other hand, Darryl Block would prioritize affordability in his decisions in Tallahassee. He’s made affordability a primary part of his platform, not a sad side note.
Darryl understands families need to stretch every dollar—and when it comes to the money taxpayers send to the state government, we need to know it’s being spent in our best interest. The era of stealing money from sick kids needs to end.
We need a new era. We need a time of increased purchasing power for regular Americans. We need a renewed respect for our social contract: where those who work hard achieve prosperity.
Here are Darryl’s top priorities when it comes to making our government work for us:
Protect the Rural Boundary and Our Natural Resources
Last year, our state senator, Jason Brodeur, attacked the rural boundary that was upheld by 82% of voters in 2024. While the bill Brodeur supported didn’t pass, developer and former state representative Chris Dorworth continues to imperil the rural boundary for his own enrichment.
Seminole County is known as Florida’s Natural Choice for a reason. We know how important it is to protect our natural resources and not sell them off to developers. We’ve seen what happens when Florida overdevelops and those who profit from new construction aren’t required to thoroughly consider—and pay for—the impact.
(That change was thanks to Rick Scott while he was our governor. This is what you get with Republicans in charge of Florida.)
Darryl Block has made the rural boundary an important part of his campaign. Recognizing that the rural boundary protects not only our land and wildlife but also our water, Darryl told the Orlando Sentinel, “This is not a partisan, Republican or Democrat, issue. These are issues that are important to all of us in Seminole County.”
Meanwhile, as the Sentinel observed, Plakon has put the rural boundary on her website but has not provided details about her position, either on the site or by returning calls for comment.
Given that our very own state senator, Brodeur, has so recently tried to destroy our rural boundary—and his buddy Dorworth continues his own attempts—we need a state representative who’s willing to make much more noise than Plakon has been thus far.
Defend Healthcare
Across the United States, healthcare is becoming less affordable. Thanks to last year’s budget reconciliation bill, Medicaid is experiencing the largest cuts in its history. Americans who buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act are faced with skyrocketing premiums.
And public health itself is presided over by a secretary who openly flouts established science. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has sowed misinformation about vaccines and allowed measles to run rampant. He has endorsed a long-debunked wild goose chase to link autism with vaccines.
Our Republican officials in Florida are complicit in the destruction of quality, affordable healthcare. Governor DeSantis has encouraged anti-vaccination rhetoric despite the proven effectiveness of vaccines. Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo has presided over a measles outbreak, yet is currently trying to remove four vaccines from the childhood schedule required for public and private schools.
This has all happened with Rachel Plakon in office.
What has she done to make healthcare more affordable? To ensure our population maintains high enough vaccination rates to provide herd immunity?
Herd immunity protects vulnerable people who cannot safely be vaccinated—very young children, the elderly, cancer patients, people with disabilities. How does ignoring this issue show that these people are valued members of our community?
Darryl Block knows firsthand the challenges of navigating the American healthcare system when you need it most. When his oldest son passed away from a rare disease, Darryl successfully advocated at the state level for expanded screenings, which help families access answers—and treatments—when they can be more effective.
Darryl has already shown he has what it takes to stand up for Floridians’ healthcare needs. He knows that government should do more than get out of the way of deadly yet highly preventable diseases.
Government is meant to protect our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are all threatened when we allow diseases to run rampant and encourage the spread of not only viruses but also misinformation. We need leaders like Darryl who will stand up to that threat.
Fund Public Schools
In Florida, Moms for Liberty and MAGA have run roughshod through our children’s education. Book bans have become common. Thanks to defunding and Florida’s high cost of living, which leads some families to leave the state, schools are closing.
Governor DeSantis has gone to war on our children’s knowledge. He taught Florida’s children we “don’t say gay.” We apparently can’t say “critical race theory” either—not that it was ever taught in elementary schools, and not that the average Republican politician can accurately define it. And we certainly can’t have diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Then there are the more recent ways the DeSantis administration has failed our children and their education.
DeSantis himself turned against the poorly considered Amendment 3 because it would not put school funding on the chopping block. The police and firefighters’ unions have spoken out against this potential disaster of an amendment because it would defund first responders—including the police.
Yet that wasn’t enough for DeSantis, not without putting our schools at risk.
Florida’s teaching about climate change and evolution is under fire—precisely because Florida’s proposed curricula refuse to take these crucial concepts seriously. “Evolution” and “climate change” are being censored, and our children and their critical thinking skills are at risk of being left behind.
And Florida is fiftieth in teacher pay. Out of fifty states, ours is right at the bottom.
We in Seminole County value our public school system, which is ranked among the top in Florida. We want our children’s teachers to be able to focus on teaching, not worrying about how to pay the bills and taking on side hustles because Republican officials don’t value public education.
Rachel Plakon claims she has “voted for RECORD increases in teacher salaries,” yet these “RECORD increases” have still put our teachers’ compensation at the very bottom.
We need leaders who understand our children are an investment in our future. And Darryl Block is that kind of leader.
Darryl has children who attend Florida’s public schools. His wife is a teacher at a local public school. He knows the importance of keeping our schools strong.
Florida can’t afford to treat our children like they don’t matter. Our children deserve a high-quality education—and the funding to make it happen.
Expand Veteran Support
Thanks to DOGE, Veterans Affairs lost valuable funding that improved efficiency and served our veterans. Even before this, veterans have experienced significantly less support than they deserve from the country they’ve faithfully served.
And in Florida, which has one of the largest veteran populations in the United States, 27% live in an ALICE household—Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. As charitable organization Project Vet Relief puts it, these veterans are “struggling to afford basic needs despite working or receiving benefits.”
And about seven percent of our veterans are living below the poverty line. According to the 2025 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report to Congress, six to eight percent of Florida’s homeless population are veterans, and thirty-seven percent of Florida’s homeless veterans are unsheltered—“sleeping in places not meant for human habitation.”
There is clearly room for Florida to do more for those who have so bravely served our country. Darryl Block has worked with active-duty servicemembers in crisis. He has a track record of caring for those who’ve shown so much care for us.
Support Children and Families
The affordability crisis has also impacted families and their opportunities to care and provide for their children.
A lack of support for working families means mothers often have to go back to work before the postpartum period is over; they forego bonding time with their babies not because they want to but because they have to make ends meet.
Fathers and babies need this bonding time too. Paid maternity leave and paid paternity leave would benefit the entire family and society as a whole, yet according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only about a quarter of civilian workers had access to paid parental leave in March 2023.
And even after the baby’s first few months of life, difficulties acquiring quality childcare threaten young families’ livelihoods. Unaffordable childcare sometimes means a parent has to quit working because it doesn’t make financial sense for them to pay so much for the ability to keep working.
According to Florida TaxWatch, 15.3 percent of working parents declined work due to childcare conflicts for their children under six years old. The organization also reports that 14 percent of working parents “experience income losses exceeding $9.8 billion due to leaving the workforce altogether.”
And what does this cost their employers? Almost $5 billion because of the turnover.
Clearly this is a problem we should all care about—parents, childcare workers, businesses, citizens, and residents.
Yet what has Rachel Plakon done for the working families of Florida?
For that matter, what has the Florida Legislature under Republican leadership done to ensure that parents can provide for their children—materially and developmentally?
We need a change in Tallahassee. We need leaders like Darryl Block, who knows parents aren’t the only stakeholders in their children’s futures.
Darryl would ensure families are able to meet their children’s needs. His platform prioritizes parents’ ability to choose to work instead of being forced out through a lack of affordable, quality childcare.
Electing a candidate who cares about our children’s wellbeing, development, and education is the obvious choice in a county that prides itself on its schools. Now it’s time to follow up by ensuring families can access childcare. We know that, when we invest in our children’s futures, we all benefit.
Send Darryl Block to the Florida House
Darryl Block supports working families.
He knows we need more buying power than the current affordability crisis—in the nation and particularly in Florida—has brought us. For too long, conservatives have talked down to workers, acting like we just aren’t working hard enough. But we’ve worked harder and been more productive, and still Republican officials have allowed our buying power to fall behind.
One important part of our buying power is our tax dollars. Darryl knows that when we pay Tallahassee, we’re paying them for goods and services—and we should expect to get those goods and services.
We don’t pay Tallahassee to shill for data centers.
We don’t pay Tallahassee to cover for insurance agencies’ dodgy practices as they rake in our money and cry poverty.
And we certainly don’t pay Tallahassee to take money from poor sick kids and funnel it into political propaganda.
It’s way past time for us to hold those in government to a high standard. We should expect them to be stewards of our money, to use it wisely the way we use our own money wisely. We cannot pretend it is unrealistic for We the People to expect this.
And in this election, it’s not unrealistic. Accountability is within reach.
Even in Florida, we have options. We don’t have to accept MAGA mismanagement and corruption forever. We can vote for Democrats like Darryl Block up and down the ballot.