Gubernatorial candidate Paul Renner is taking a stand against what his campaign calls “corruption and self-dealing in government.”

And his latest policy push is allowing him to go on the offense against the front-runner in the Republican Primary field, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds of Naples.

Renner, a former House Speaker from Palm Coast, says his onetime Florida House colleague epitomizes the kind of slick self-interest that needs to be rooted out of the public sphere.

“With respect to insider trading and stock trades, look, my opponent Congressman Donalds went into office, not very wealthy, and now he’s wealthy in a very short amount of time — we believe a tenfold increase in his net worth,” Renner said in Tallahassee.

“How can you explain that other than something is amiss, something is wrong? And so we cannot have people that get into the public office and enrich themselves at the expense of taxpayers and forget all about actually showing up and delivering results.”

At last check, Donalds’ net worth ranged somewhere between $630,000 and $2.6 million, according to the Naples Daily News last year, though Quiver Quantitative shows a number of $4.37 million, up from $81,000 in 2020 and $1.27 million in 2023.

For his part, Donalds supports a ban on congressional stock trading, but has been an active trader at least through December 2025, with a trade volume of $10.83 million. He also did not file required periodic transaction reports for more than 100 trades amounting to $1.6 million.

Renner would like to air these issues out in a debate, particularly after Donalds recently said he and other opponents envy his front-runner status when asked about criticisms.

“Look, politicians, people that are running for office, owe the voters. I do this each and every day in events, and I take tough questions from you. I take questions from voters. That is our obligation to answer these tough questions. And he responded by saying, ‘I’m ahead, everybody would like to be where I am. Next question.’ And my point to you is if you start to investigate some of the things that I talked about today in terms of how he’s enriched himself in office, you’ll ask a lot of questions, and those questions need to be asked by voters,” Renner said.

“Have you gone into office to serve the public or serve yourself? And I think the answer is demonstrable and clear with respect to Congressman Donalds. He shouldn’t be allowed to get away with just saying, next question. If you look at him, there’s a lot of questions.”

To remedy corruption in government, Renner proposes legislation requiring elected officials to report stock trades within three days of them being made, with a penalty of the cost of the trade if they fail to do so. Insider trading would merit removal from office.

He also would like to ban foreign contributions into citizens’ initiatives.

He is also proposing tougher sanctions on lawmakers who “lie on a travel form” or otherwise derive benefit from taxpayer largesse, with felony penalties for more than $10,000 of suspected graft and cases to be pursued by statewide prosecutors.

Renner also proposes scrutinizing budgets for grifting and says he would, if elected Governor, “leverage modern technology that we have through AI and other sources to find those patterns of conduct, those patterns of spending that would highlight possible public corruption.”

“There’s a fundamental problem that brings us here today, and the reason we’re making this Florida First proposal to end corruption and bring integrity and accountability back to government. People have lost faith in our institutions,” Renner said.

“They believe the system is rigged for those in office, for those that are well connected, who can hire a lobbyist, and the decisions are being made on Wall Street, not on Main Street, that decisions are being made that enrich people in elected office, while those of us that are not in office can’t afford to pay our insurance, our property tax, and our electric bills. And when I’m Governor, that will end. We will bring integrity back to government and hold elected officials accountable.”

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