The self-described Teddy Roosevelt-style Republican is running an insurgent grassroots campaign.
By Nic Steinig
Host: An unusually contentious Republican primary is developing for the U.S. Congressional seat in Florida’s District 16, which spans Manatee County and portions of Sarasota, Pinellas, and DeSoto Counties. Before a recent redrawing of the map, this district consistently voted Republican in the past, with a historical 7-percentage-point gap. So, if history is an indicator, the winner of this primary is likely to become a U.S. Congressman. WSLR News reporter Nic Steinig sat down for an extended interview with Eddie Speir.
Nic Steinig: One high-profile candidate in Florida’s District 16’s race is Sydney Gruters, the wife of Joe Gruters, the just-retired Florida Senator who now handles the levers of the Republican Party nationwide. She quickly received institutional backing from prominent figures such as President Donald Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson, and U.S. Senator Rick Scott, and her campaign claims it raised $100,000 in the first five hours after announcing her candidacy.
Speir – wearing a cowboy hat – brought a campaign aide to his radio interview. | Photo: Werner
But there’s a dark horse in the race—Eddie Speir is running an insurgent grassroots campaign against Gruters. If you have been driving north on I-75, you may have seen a row of mannequin soldiers clad in revolutionary garments next to his campaign banner. Speir calls them “winter soldiers,” and to him, they represent the will to fight for one’s country during an hour of crisis.
WSLR spoke at length with Speir when he came into our downtown Sarasota studio for a two-hour interview. Speir is presenting himself as an anti-establishment candidate and is melding that platform with an uncompromising social conservatism rooted in his deeply held Christian convictions. He agreed that his beliefs are difficult to pin down to a label and don’t fit neatly into a mold but felt the closest description was of a Teddy Roosevelt-style Republican.
Many locals may recognize his name as one of those whom Governor Ron DeSantis appointed to the New College board of trustees as part of the conservative effort to “take over” higher education. Although the Senate ultimately did not confirm his appointment, he made a splash in his short time in the role.
At that time, Speir called for the firing of all faculty to realign the institution with conservative social values, pushed to dismantle the Gender Studies program due to their role in promoting what he called “gender mutilation,” and stated that he believes being trans is a mental illness. In 2023, Speir also self-identified on a Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey as an “abortion abolitionist” and was known for openly defying the federal government’s mask mandate at the private school he started in Parrish, Inspiration Academy. On those cultural issues—and others like them—Speir holds no punches.
What many listeners may not know is his ongoing heated clash with the local Republican establishment and his populist policy leanings, which make his platform unique among the current slate of Republican candidates. He claims to be an environmentalist who opposes unchecked development in Florida, land-use arbitrage, phosphate mining and AI data centers.
Eddie Speir: We’re paving over Florida. Our aquifer and our water need to be protected. They’re not being protected. And developers like Pat Neal, Carlos Beruff and Benderson—politicians will not call them out by name. I’m calling them out by name. They have a network of corruption through their political consultants. People like Anthony Pedasini, like Max Goodman, like Jennings DePriest and Peter Sorche. They are grooming candidates who are either naive and don’t know, and then when the time comes, ungodly amount of pressure comes for them to vote. And who do they vote for? Here locally, they vote for Pat Neal, Carlos Beruff, Benderson and Jensen. These are the people who are corrupting our entire political process. Sydney Gruters spoke at Pat Neal’s fundraiser. That says something. I didn’t get an invitation. I don’t expect to get an invitation because I’m calling it out.
NS: He also said he wants to challenge the “entrenched establishment” by reining in the influence of “dark money” from special interests in U.S. politics. He has criticized what he calls the “global elite and their pedophile rings,” which he claims are enmeshed among both political parties, transnational corporations and ultra-wealthy circles. He said that, while he isn’t against corporations in general, the throughline of his policies is anti-corruption.
ES: Citizens United is a big problem, and it’s not an easy fix. Joe Gruters and his business partner Eric Robinson have put together 85 PACs. This is where the dark money flows. And I was approached by—count them—zero PACs and Super PACs. Does that mean that every corporation is evil? No, not necessarily. But I think they’re not even hiding. The World Economic Forum, and the people that are associated with that, are going to then end up being the CEOs of these multinational operations. When the time comes, they will sell our freedoms out. And they have. It’s globalist elite, it’s rich, it’s corporations—all of the above, and it’s incredibly hard to pinpoint them.
NS: Since conservative politics usually disfavor direct economic intervention, WSLR asked Speir how he plans to rein in transnational corporations. His response? The use of the Sherman Antitrust Act to tackle monopolies.
ES: If we look at big tech, my position would articulate that for you. I believe that there needs to be some regulation that happens within big tech. There’s a monopoly of a number of corporations. They’re all working together—think of the mafia in New York City, that there was five families—pushing out every other company that would try to participate in the free markets. I’m talking about Microsoft, I’m talking about Meta. Now the government is gonna get about a 10% stake in this. Now you’ve got government-controlled monopolies, so the Sherman Antitrust Act and the laws there need to be applied.
NS: WSLR then asked if there were other large industries besides big tech that Speir took issue with.
ES: My war is against corruption. It’s not against specific industries. It’s against the corruption of those industries and the crony capitalism that government officials will continue to exploit. Let’s talk about the farming in Monsanto and the things that are happening that are poisoning Americans. Bayer, for example. They just recently tried to sneak in a bill in Congress that would exempt them from lawsuits of farmers with Roundup.
NS: Speir’s framing of his candidacy as an establishment outsider raises the question of how he secured a political appointment from Governor DeSantis in the first place. Speir claims that he gained notoriety as a cultural maverick when he opposed COVID-19 government policies but was soon booted from the position since he refused to “be handled.”
ES: They hold and wait and try to develop as much grift as they can around it. So you need to be handled, and you have a handler. So somebody tried to be my handler, and I rejected that. When I signed that oath, it was to the Constitution and the taxpayers of Florida. It wasn’t to a political party. It wasn’t to a handler who “got me the job.” There was a tremendous amount of pressure to do what they wanted me to do.
NS: Sydney Gruter’s most notable endorsement is President Trump himself. WSLR asked Speir whether Trump is therefore part of the establishment that Speir is running against.
Claire and Eddie Speir
ES: Well, I’ll let that question linger. A lot of people will say he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s made famously bad endorsements. As a matter of fact, a lot of the reason why we’re in the position that we’re in right now, from a Republican standpoint that wants to pass the Save America Act, is because of Donald Trump’s bad endorsements, and that comes through Suzy Wiles and part of the Florida swamp that has been corrupting politics here in Florida for a long period of time and now has been given the keys to D.C., and Pam Bonney did an awful job as Attorney General. A lot of people are asking me that with Trump versus DeSantis. I never supported either, and people were angry with me. They’re like, “No, this is a purity test,” and I will not be reduced to a purity test. As a matter of fact, that creates tribalism, and that’s the opposite of what this country needs as far as having an ongoing open discussion.
NS: Speir is running on an “America First” platform, but there have been serious discrepancies over the last few years on what “America First” actually means. Former Representative Thomas Massie was jettisoned from the party when he voted against Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, citing the growing deficit and the waste of tax dollars, and opposed foreign intervention in Iran on an “America First” basis. President Trump then personally oversaw efforts to have him evicted for bucking the party line in the last election—and succeeded.
WSLR asked Speir to specify the details of his foreign policy position—should America wage war only as a last resort in self-defense and bring tax dollars back to the homeland, or are America’s wars abroad justified in the pursuit of its global interests? Speir landed somewhere between the two. He was outspoken in his distrust of the Iranian government and views China as a rising threat.
ES: They have been the largest exporter of jihad in the world with their radical clerics. They’re not to be trusted. This goes all the way to the point of me criticizing Trump with this latest peace agreement that we still are in the same position of “trust them.” I don’t trust them.
NS: Yet he juxtaposed the need to protect global interests with the assertion that the U.S. also needs to hit the brakes on some conflicts and overall spends too liberally on foreign intervention.
ES: I would go back and look at history. I think before World War II and after World War II, there’s differences there. The US dollar became the standard for oil, and then that became justification for a lot of these police states and actions. What do we call these now? This is an incredibly difficult issue to deal with because our interests are in a global economy. And I have a problem with a “global economy.” Is there a compelling reason to be in any engagement? That’s what we need to ask ourselves. Who’s our ally? Who’s our enemy? And it needs to be taken very seriously, and we need to put the brakes on these things, and there’s way too much money that’s going out with wars. But I also want to say USAID, that is like this nation-building type of operation that’s just so filled with corruption. We need to cut funding there.
NS: Speir also swore off funding from AIPAC and stated he believes there’s compelling evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was a Mossad agent. He then said he is against any country exerting influence on U.S. politics, whether it’s Israel or China.
ES: I’ve said that I will not take any money from AIPAC. It’s a big issue with people, so I don’t want anything to bridge and hurt the trust that Americans have of their elected officials. I think any country’s influence on the United States needs to be measured and curtailed. I think what we’re missing right now is the Chinese influence that’s coming on American soil.
NS: His platform also prioritizes securing the border and, with it, tightening U.S. immigration policy. When asked whether he was concerned about the infringement of due process or civil liberties by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he felt the issue was not widespread and that certain allowances were necessary for the agency to carry out its function. He did, however, express distrust of government surveillance and civil liberty infringements from other agencies, such as the NSA.
On the issue of affordability for everyday Americans, Speirs’ plan is to limit government spending to curb inflation and restrict H-1B visas, but he has yet to propose any other direct measures to improve the economy.
Speir appears to be in the camp of a new type of Republican candidate that has materialized since 2016—one that focuses on a purported “America First” ideology, and which rhetorically aligns as an outsider to DC politics and expresses grave skepticism of the integrity of both government and corporate power centers but also unreservedly engages in conservative cultural politics.
As the two victories of President Trump demonstrate, positioning as an outsider can yield powerful electoral results in the current political climate. In 2024, Speir ran a campaign against Rep. Vern Buchanan in District 16 and won 40% of the vote. This year, he will also have to contend with a three-way race, as yet another candidate, Ed Pope, has entered as a purported “DC outsider.” Either way, this is a candidate to keep an eye on.
According to Speir, his greatest attribute is that his faith makes him “unleverageable.”
ES: You can’t love money and God. You’re gonna serve one and hate the other. That’s what the Bible says in Matthew 624. That’s a constant reminder that money is not my God. It doesn’t matter what kind of bribe they give. My soul is more important than that, and my love of this country is not for sale.
NS: Reporting for WSLR News, Nic Steinig.
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