Florida Lt Gov. Jay Collins speaking at Veterans Plaza in Tampa on April 1, 2026. (Photo by Mitch Perry/Florida Phoenix)
TAMPA — Sounding at times more like a candidate for federal office rather than the man who wants to govern Florida for the next four years, Lt. Gov. Jay Collins discussed national security Wednesday during a press conference close to MacDill Air Force Base in South Tampa, the primary hub for coordinating U.S. military operations in the Middle East.
Collins choose the site to illuminate the indictments entered last week against two Chinese Americans who face decades in prison for alleged crimes related to leaving an explosive device outside MacDill last month. U.S. Attorney Greg Kehoe said the U.S. government had no immediate evidence that Alan Zheng, the 20-year-old accused of planting the device, was working on behalf of the Chinese government or any other country.
“We have to have zero tolerance when it comes to enemy penetration of our education, defense, and critical infrastructure institutions,” Collins said as he stood next to a placard listing what he said were excerpts of two articles of Chinese National Intelligence Law demanding that Chinese nationals studying abroad engage in espionage.
He listed several policies he said he would push if elected as governor in November, starting with banning visa holders from “all nations of terror and/or espionage” from attending Florida universities or working for Florida companies that rely on government contracts.
He also called for counterterrorism training for state and local law enforcement officials to continue to take place. Gov. DeSantis said in 2024 that state and local officials law enforcement agencies needed to pick up slack for what he said was a federal government that no longer engaged in such efforts.
Collins wants to see local and state agencies work with federal agencies “to have access to real time critical intelligence information” — sounding similar to a proposal sponsored in the Florida House this year by Hillsborough County Republican Danny Alvarez to create a counterterrorism and counterintelligence unit within the Florida Department of Law Enforcement that has raised civil liberties concerns and ultimately died in committee.
Collins isn’t the only Republican candidate for governor talking about the dangers of foreigners coming to the U.S. to potentially inflict harm on Floridians. Last week in Tampa, former House Speaker Paul Renner announced that if elected this fall he would promote a federal ban on Muslim immigration, asserting a lack of compatibility between Islam and America was “a statement of fact.”
Both men are military veterans — Renner spent a career in the U.S. Navy and Reserves.
Collins is a former U.S. Army Special Forces combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient who served more than two decades in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, and South America. He filed to run for Congress against Democrat Kathy Castor in 2021, but then was recruited by DeSantis to take on Democrat Janet Cruz in the Senate District 14 race in 2022, which he won handily. DeSantis chose him last August to serve as his lieutenant governor for the remainder of his second term in office.
Collins accused “New York City leftists” of ending the policing tactic known as “stop and frisk,” originally introduced in the 1990s by then Mayor Rudy Guilani and later expanded by Mayor Michael Bloomberg before a federal judge ruled it unconstitutional in 2013. Collins derided the federal judge in that case, Shira Scheindlin, as “another radical leftist” and noted that she was ultimately removed from that case.
“We have to stop allowing that to happen,” he said. “We can never allow those dangerous leftist, ideological views to harm our people in Florida and put them at risk.”
In that same vein, he invoked DeSantis’ removal from office of Democratic state attorneys Andrew Warren and Monique Worrell and he would do likewise. “Leftist prosecutors who ignore the oath of office and coddle criminals have to be dealt with. If they can’t do their job and protect our people, then they need to be removed from office.”
Terrorists in Florida?
Joining Collins during the press conference was former CIA agent Sara Adams, later a senior adviser on the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Benghazi, according to her LinkedIn page.
Adams cited public comments by now former National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent in December that there are “around 18,000 known and suspected terrorists that the Biden administration let come into our country.”
“Now, how many of them are here in Florida?” she asked, adding that previously the United States used to thwart suspected terrorists overseas in places like Syria, Iraq, and Libya.
“Now they have come to our country, and so now this is a local problem. Now your local law enforcement, your local sheriff, your state has to thwart these problems, and we need to now make like an infrastructure and a system to do that before it’s too late.”
State of the race
Collins remains far behind Naples U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds in the campaign to win the Republican primary for governor on Aug. 18. A University of North Florida poll conducted in late February showed Donalds garnering 31% support among likely GOP primary voters, with Collins at 4%.
In a separate interview Tuesday, Collins said it is way too early to tell who the nominee will be. He noted that Adam Putnam in 2018 and Bill McCollum in 2010 were presumptive front-runners early in those election cycles, yet neither won the nomination.
“The front runner doesn’t often win; the tincture of time brings with it more scrutiny,” he said, hinting that Donalds hasn’t been scrutinized nearly enough since Trump endorsed his candidacy.
“I try hard not to talk poorly of people too terribly much and talk about myself, but I would highly encourage people to begin and do a Google search on bills that people have run, what they stand for, and what they talk about. I’m the same person today that I’ve been every day. I served my nation, I served our state, and I serve my family to the best of my ability every single day.”
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