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Dear reader,
I am running for public office, seeking the Florida Senate seat for District 28, covering Collier, Hendry and Lee counties. This encompasses the towns of Naples, Marco Island, Immokalee, Ave Maria, Gateway, LaBelle, and Clewiston—and the Alligator Alcatraz concentration camp.
You should now consider this a partisan website and blog, committed to advocacy rather than non-partisan coverage and analysis.
This is nothing I ever anticipated doing. Indeed, if I were pursuing a political career, I would have started this effort last year.
But, as the Declaration of Independence put it, “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them”—the American people— “under absolute Despotism,” it is time to take action, even if that action takes one outside a previous sphere of activity.
Donald Trump and, in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, have invariably been pursuing the object of reducing the American people and the residents of Florida to a state of absolute despotism.
Our political system still affords us the means of resistance. One of those means is the pursuit of elected public office. For the past eight years in The Paradise Progressive blog I have used logic and language to cover and expose their “abuses and usurpations,” particularly relating to the region of Southwest Florida. The moment has come for me to pursue the power of public office to take that resistance to new levels and battlefronts.
These “abuses and usurpations” are reaching a critical point, indeed one where the very existence of the United States and the future of Americans as a free people is at stake.
Nationally, Donald Trump, reigning as though he were a monarch and ignoring the laws, the Constitution and Bill of Rights, has committed the nation to war without any consultation or consent. Every time Americans have to fill their gas tanks they’re being robbed by a war they had no say in starting. When you watch your wallet drain as your tank fills, that’s Trump at the pump.
He has so mismanaged the economy that everyday Americans are being reduced to poverty despite their most strenuous efforts and hard work.
His actions have robbed Americans of their freedom from fear by sending a masked, murderous, motley mob of mercenaries into towns and cities to terrorize and abuse them.
In Florida, Ron DeSantis, reigning in the style of Donald Trump, has waged war on learning and thought, on science and public health, on public education and teachers at all levels. He and his enablers are waging war on the very water, air and soil that makes life in Florida possible for everyone regardless of their political affiliation, beliefs, or national origins. He has attacked institutions and industries that previously welcomed and depended upon visitors from all over the world and disparaged and insulted innocent people of foreign origin.
In a state that is one of the most environmentally vulnerable in the world, he and his extremist legislature have deliberately and purposefully denied and dismissed the clear and present challenges of climate change, to the detriment and danger of all Floridians.
He and his political followers have also sought to eliminate the autonomy and authority of the state’s local governments, especially when it comes to land use and management, in an effort to override responsible planning and governance.
The ultimate end of these actions will be an oppressed nation and a Florida that is poor, paved and polluted.
For all these reasons and many more, I will try to change the current course of events through the system in place.
That’s why I’m running for state senator in District 28. My campaign website is Silverberg4Florida.com. And yes, I’m taking donations (a link is on the site).
My heartfelt thanks to the people who have already made this possible.
In the days ahead I will be elaborating in this space on my reasons for running, the solutions and actions I intend to pursue, and the end state I hope to achieve for Florida and the nation.
This campaign is a race to restore decency, dignity and democracy to Florida and the life we all lead. It’s a race to conserve our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, our freedom from fear, and our pursuit of happiness. It is a campaign to make Florida affordable again. And it is a campaign to end Alligator Alcatraz.
The path to victory is steep. The odds are long. But I believe the journey is worth making.
I hope you’ll make it with me.
And, as always…
Liberty lives in light
© 2026 by David Silverberg