Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford focused on minority employment during speech Monday at Nova Southeastern University — so much so, reports the Sun Sentinel, he had to remind the audience that he was “not one of those Occupy Wall Streeters.”
Weatherford, one of Florida’s leading conservatives, addressed about 250 business leaders in the heavily-Democratic Broward County as headliner of an event hosted by the bipartisan group Broward Days, Anthony Man writes in Monday’s Sun Sentinel. Prior to the 12-minute speech, Weatherford spent an hour mingling with representatives of the business, political and legal community.
“Our health care system, and the fact that one out of four Floridians don’t have insurance, is a real problem,” the Wesley Chapel Republican said. “I know that we don’t have a unified way of solving that problem yet, but we’re working on it.”
Weatherford called for redistribution of knowledge, not wealth, to increase economic opportunity in Florida. During the 1970s, he said, the top one percent of Americans earned only 9 percent of the total income; today, the top one percent makes 24 percent.
“I want the whole state of Florida to be successful,” Weatherford said. “We can’t do that if we leave people behind.”
“And that may not sound like a Republican, but that’s what Floridians should be talking about,” he added.
