I would not be here in the state if it were not for you. My family moved here in 2020,

pretty famously. I parted the Colorado River and led forth all of my people from California to the state of Florida.

I brought along my parents. I brought along two of my sisters. I brought along my parents in law,

so we're responsible for part of that giant influx of Republican voters that

happened into the state. But again, none of that would have happened without your governance.

So why don't we start with the election of 2018, because really the fate of this state and

I think the fate of the nation going forward may have been about this close to going the other

way in that election.

So tell us about the race of 2018.

When did you decide that you wanted to run for governor?

And you talk about it in the book.

What was sort of the decision-making process?

Well, I think some of you who I've known for a while,

remember that I was elected to the U.S. Congress about 10 years ago.

I was doing that. I was in my third term.

But what happened was at the end of 2016, my wife and I had our first child, our daughter, Madison,

and I'm in Washington three nights a week, they're at home, and I'm kind of going back and forth,

but I'm like, wait a minute, you know, I don't want to be in Washington three nights a week when my wife and our babies there. Then we had our son, 2018, and it was kind of the same thing. And so I was like, you know what, I thought we were going to lose the house in 2018. I wasn't rooting for that, but I thought Republicans were going to lose the House, and we

did, because that's just the natural cycle of politics.

So did I really want to be up there away from my family with Nancy Pelosi as Speaker?

Nah, probably don't want to sign up for that.

But I thought I could still serve, but I said, you know, I'm only going to go through

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