On the Issues
Standing Up for Working Families
Fentrice grew up in a working-class household in Lakeland. Her mother was a teacher and union member, her father a truck driver and dispatcher at Publix. That upbringing shaped her legislative career.
As Florida House Democratic Leader, she has fought to protect workers’ right to organize, to make sure that billionaires and big companies pay their fair share, to prevent taxes from being shifted to working families, and to champion apprenticeship programs and prevailing wage standards that build real career pathways.
Fully Funding Public Schools
Fentrice’s mother was a public school teacher. Fentrice attributes her opportunities to her public school education. She has never forgotten what that classroom dedication looks like up close. She has fought to fully fund public education, raise teacher pay, protect educators’ collective bargaining rights, and end the book bans and curriculum censorship that have turned Florida classrooms into political battlegrounds.
She believes every school receiving taxpayer dollars should be held to the same standards of transparency and accountability. Florida’s kids deserve a legislature that invests in their future, not one that defunds it.
Expanding Access to Healthcare
Hundreds of thousands of Floridians fall into a health insurance coverage gap; they earn too much for Medicaid and too little for marketplace insurance. Fentrice supports expanding Medicaid to close that gap and keep struggling rural hospitals open.
Right now, Florida sends billions of our tax dollars up to the federal government to pay for Medicaid in other states. Expanding Medicaid here would keep those dollars in Florida and save us billions each year.
Fentrice has also pushed for real oversight of for-profit managed care plans, because healthcare decisions should be driven by patient outcomes, not corporate profit margins.
Reining In AI Infrastructure
As data centers expand rapidly across Florida, Fentrice believes the rush to build AI infrastructure cannot come at the expense of the communities forced to live with it. These facilities strain local power grids, drive up utility costs for everyday ratepayers, and consume massive amounts of water and energy with little transparency or community input.
Fentrice supports strong state regulation of AI data center development, including real oversight of energy and water use, protections for ratepayers, and a seat at the table for the working families and neighborhoods most affected. Innovation shouldn’t mean handing Florida’s environment and household budgets over to unaccountable corporations.
Restoring Fairness and Transparency in Tallahassee
Fentrice has watched Florida’s budget process get hijacked by policy riders dropped in the dead of night, and legislation quietly written by billionaire-funded “think tanks” with no public disclosure.
She supports real transparency requirements like disclosing when outside groups draft legislation, requiring public hearings before major policy changes get attached to must-pass budget bills.
She also opposes the wave of state preemption laws that strip local communities of the power to protect their own workers and neighborhoods. Floridians deserve a government that answers to them, not to the highest bidder.
