A fifth-generation Floridian, still living on the same piece of property that she grew up on in Zolfo Springs, Denise Grimsley knows a thing or two about ‘Flo-Grown.’ Grimsley experienced a different childhood than most: her family’s land included a 350-acre citrus grove, 100-acres of cattle, she learned to drive on a dirt road, and there were no neighbors to speak of. When her dad fell ill, she returned from her job as a registered nurse to take care of the family oil business, all while attending business school at nights and on the weekend. Her time in the Florida Senate has led her to running for Florida’s Commissioner of Agriculture.

Denise is fluent in Floridian. Her biggest role model is also a Floridian, although he’s never held office or played for an NFL team. Denise says, “there will never be a statute after him, and that’s my dad, who has served as one of my best friends and my mentor, who’s taught me a lot about faith. He taught me about hard work. As I think back over my childhood, watching him and my mom sit at the kitchen table and try to figure out how to make ends meet when the’re starting their business, which they started in 1967, he’s taught me so much. And still, I still go to him for advice. I didn’t get into this race without talking to him first.”

Her first job was as a candy-striper in her local hospital, so Denise was especially proud to return to the same hospital after 40 years as hospital administrator. Five years after returning as hospital administrator, a new facility was built and Hardee County saw a major upgrade in their health care network.

In a fertile ground for political careers, Brecht Heuchan took a Bachelor of Science degree in Political Science from Florida State, an internship with the House Republican Campaign Committee, and turned it into a lengthy career as the founder of Contribution Link, a political data and fundraising company. Now, he faces the unparalleled pressure of sitting on a commission tasked with reviewing the constitution that governs the people of Florida.

Brecht is fluent in Floridian. When appointed by Governor Scott to serve on the Constitutional Review Committee that meets every 20 years, he said about receiving advice from the Governor, “the only real advice that the Governor gave me was, “Don’t let anything bad happen.” And of course the next question was, “Well what does that mean?” And he’ll say, “Well, you’ll know. You use your own judgment to make good decisions for the people of Florida.””

Most inspiring to Brecht are two political leaders in the Republican party: the first is Daniel Webster, the first Republican speaker of the house, with whom Brecht was able to work for six years. The other leader that Brecht admires is Florida’s outgoing governor, Governor Rick Scott, who gave Brecht perspective on the awesomeness and responsibility of the Office of Governor.

Lucy Morgan is NOT your typical Florida retiree. A long-time veteran of the Florida journalism industry, Lucy has both reported news, as well as made news, while investigating corruption in law enforcement. The accolades are second to the stories she’s collected, not that a Pulitzer Prize or an induction into the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame and the Florida Newspaper Hall of Fame is anything to sneeze at, Morgan would probably equate these accomplishments to the prison sentence she received for protecting sources.

Morgan is fluent in Floridian. Morgan V. State made a splash in Florida, as well as national news. Morgan states “[Morgan V. State] made me instantly notorious, I guess you could say, and it made it kind of fun. It also gave me a reputation of someone who could keep quiet about where they got information. For years, I would call a law enforcement officer, lawyer, somebody in the state that I didn’t know to ask for information and when I said, “Hi, this is Lucy Morgan”, they would say, “As in Morgan v. State?” It helped me get information for many years by developing a reputation that I didn’t tell everything I knew about where I got information.”

Although the bill of rights guarantees a ‘free’ press, there is often a price to pay for investigative journalism, especially when the investigation is the sheriff’s department. While investigating in Pasco County, Morgan found her pool screen had been cut, and her four-year-old cat had been poisoned. Fortunately, the cat recovered and lived another 15 years, but Morgan counts it among her scariest stories.

It isn’t just Florida’s enticing attractions and vast ecological diversity that make this state stand out. Florida is also the only state in the union to have an automatic Constitution Review Commission (CRC) which meets every year. Mary Adkins, a Master Legal Skills Professor at the University of Florida, joins us to discuss her research into the history of Florida’s CRC, and her new book, Making Modern Florida: How the Spirit of Reform Shaped a New State Constitution.

Mary is fluent in Floridian. When asked what recommendation she would give to the 2017/18 Commission, she said the following, “the best advice I’ve ever was from a member of the 1997/98 CRC named Carlos Alfonso and here’s what he said… ‘lay your ego at the door, don’t think about your party, and be a Floridian.”

During her time researching the Constitutional Revision Commission, Adkins was exposed to some of Florida’s most influential leaders, but to her, one stands above the rest: Reubin Askew. Askew was Florida’s 37th Governor, and in Adkin’s opinion, restored integrity to the state government during a difficult time period.

In Panama City Beach, there’s a famous seafood restaurant called Capt. Anderson’s. Owned by the Patronis family since it opened, Capt. Anderson’s has been serving Panama City Beach as for just over fifty years. For Jimmy Patronis, clocking in at Capt. Anderson’s from the time he was a teenager helped prepare him for his current job as Florida’s Chief Financial Officer. “Up until I took the job as CFO, my brothers and I still clocked in and clocked out every day […] That was probably what taught us to be loyal to the business, understanding that it boils down to managing people, and taking care of the customer, and keeping the trains running on time.”

Patronis is fluent in Floridian. He appreciates the hard work and long hours that the state’s first responders put in order to keep its people safe. “I don’t think that people realize that most first responders and firemen and EMTS spend more time with their colleagues than they do their own family members, so the sacrifices that those men and women make every day, taking time away from their families in order to protect our families.”

When asked what he felt deserved more attention, Patronis mentioned Florida’s state parks. “Me just being passionate about living in the best state in the union, probably our state park system. State parks, I think they are destinations in their own right. I think there’s lots of opportunities to see what’s great about Florida by just touring our state parks, and we’ve got some fantastic ones […] Sometimes I just encourage our citizens, go grab a parks guide, and just go explore what Florida’s got to offer.”

You probably know Representative Charlie Crist as the former governor of Florida, and as a current member of the US House of Representatives, representing Florida’s 13th district. What you probably didn’t know is that he served as the general counsel for minor league baseball right out of law school, although a career in politics would soon call to him. “I guess I probably should have seen the forecast though, because all through school, beginning with junior high school and earlier, I was involved in student government and did so all the way through law school. So that should have been a precursor for me that this would be the calling that I would answer.”

When asked how to run a successful campaign, Crist’s advice was simple: “Just be honest. Tell the people what you would like to try to accomplish for them if you are victorious, and honor that commitment, be as straightforward as you possibly can, and just stick to the things that are important and how you communicate with the people about what’s important to them, and listen.”

Crist is fluent in Floridian. As former governor, he’s impartial as to which parts of Florida he’s most fond of, preferring to appreciate the whole state. “You think about Florida, there’s not a bad place in her. Just about anywhere makes me pretty happy if I’m in Florida.”

Orlando is one of Florida’s most well known tourist destinations and technological hubs, and as such is a major source of revenue for the state. It stands to reason that a prosperous Orlando helps to create a prosperous Florida, and Tim Giuliani is doing whatever he can as the President and CEO of the Orlando Economic Partnership to make Orlando as successful a it can be. Having previously worked for the Chambers of Commerce for the state of Florida, Gainesville, and Raleigh, NC, Giuliani knows the importance of leadership and giving a community a voice in policy decisions. “If you’re in the business community taking an active leadership role in the community, it can make a world of difference. It can get things done faster. It can give voice to issues that might have gone unnoticed. And it really makes for a much more dynamic community.”

Giuliani is fluent in Floridian. When asked what he felt deserved more attention in Florida, he referred to the state’s historic involvement in the space program. “People sometimes forget that even before tourism, you had the founding for a technological university, now UCF, that helped bring this country to the moon. That happened right here in Central Florida.”

When he’s not helping the city of Orlando, Giuliani likes to relax in some of Florida’s more tropical locations. “One place I can’t wait to get back to is the Keys. I’ve gone there a few times with my family and just had great times. There’s this one place particularly in Key Largo, Conch House, that did well through the hurricane. It has the best key lime pie, so I’d say that’s one of my favorite places in Florida.”

If you listened to the radio in 2014, chances are you heard the hit song “Best Day of My Life,” meaning you’ve heard Tallahassee-native James Adam Shelley. Shelley, the lead guitarist of the band American Authors, has spent his life making what often seemed like an uphill climb to break through into the music industry. This struggle is reflected in the hit song that would later make their name, which was written when the band was at their nadir. “People are telling us, ‘No, you guys will never do it.’ The song is maybe when we’re sleeping, that that’s the best day of our life, and that’s a better version of where we’re at right now.”

Being no stranger to overcoming uphill climbs, Shelley is an avid mountain climber, a hobby that helps him remember to enjoy the simple pleasures of life. “I think there’s nothing, for me in my life, there’s nothing that makes me enjoy simplicity like getting off a mountain because I hate… truth is, I hate being on the mountain […] I’m just counting down the days, and the minutes, and the hours before I get off of it. Then, I come down and the first thing I do is I go get fried chicken […] And I sit in a t-shirt and jeans, and sandals, fried chicken and French fries and drinking coca cola, and just think, ‘Man, it’s good to be alive.’”

When asked which place in Florida he loved the most, he stayed away from the popular tourist destinations and stayed close to home. “The North Florida coast is really beautiful and amazing. The food, the culture, and people don’t realize. That also makes it special because there’s not… the only tourists really on the Florida coast is other Floridians.”

Christopher Still, whose paintings can be seen in the Governor’s Mansion and Smithsonian Institute, has earned acclaim throughout his career for the way in which he takes Florida landscapes and depicts them in styles more often reserved for “higher” subject matter, such as historic European architecture. Still’s dedication to Florida through his art has earned him an induction into the Florida Artists Hall of Fame, as well as a commission from the Florida House of Representatives to create 10 paintings that tell the history of the state.

Still is fluent in Floridian. He has spent much of his career trying to capture what makes Florida distinctly beautiful in his paintings, and believes this uniqueness is something that more Floridians should embrace. “35, 40 years ago, I had a very difficult time making that transition to people seeing the Florida landscape painted in ways they didn’t think of their own – we have a self-esteem problem where we don’t think of our own subject matter as being worthy of important art.”

A notable highlight of his career is when he was commissioned to paint a portrait of former Florida Governor Lawton Chiles. While Governor Chiles sat for the portrait, Still had to ask him to keep from fidgeting, until he realizes that the governor had important business to attend to. “I was looking at him and he kept moving a little bit. And I was saying, ‘You’ve got to move your head back.’ Kind of correcting him. Someone came over and whispered in his ear and he said, ‘I don’t know, let me ask Chris if it’s okay to take a break.’ And he said to me, ‘Is it okay if I take a phone call from the President of the United States?’”