TAMPA — Investment firm CEO James Fishback’s time in the Florida political spotlight ended Tuesday night when he finished a distant third with 10% of the vote in the race for the Republican nomination for governor.
“He didn’t do great, but as someone who was considered somewhat of a fringe candidate, and sort of dismissed by the mainstream Republican Party, he got 10%. So, that’s the other way at looking at it,” said University of Central Florida political science professor Aubrey Jewett.
Fishback’s election night watch party at the Hilton Tampa Airport Westshore was dominated by young white men, the demographic that responded most enthusiastically to his unconventional, anti-establishment campaign.
Jake Hoffman, executive director of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans, attributed Fishback’s appeal to the fact that Americans, and not just Republicans, “are still searching for disruptive candidates that give a middle finger to the political establishment.
“He appealed to 18–30-year-old males because he spoke directly to their economic pains, such as being unable to own a home, find a job, and start a family,” he said. “The other candidates in the race have been in politics long enough that they represented more of the same broken promises by Washington, D.C.”
Several of those young males told the Phoenix Tuesday night that they appreciated Fishback’s “Florida First” agenda.
“I think that he has been very successful in marketing to our generation with a lot of social media,” said David Ramirez, 18, from Plant City. “And our generation, I think we’ve seen what the establishment Republicans have done for us, which is not very much. And James is very against that, and he’s been very vocal about trying to help us when we grow up be able to afford anything.”
Loving ‘this anti-establishment stance’
Corey Griffore, 20, said he dropped out of high school to start a boat detailing company that now employs 10 people in Pinellas County. In dealing with “this older generation,” he said, he doesn’t see a lot of evidence of critical thinking.
“I just see a lot of, ‘Hey, we’re going with the party kind of thing.’ So, I love this anti-establishment stance,” he said about Fishback.
Like several people the Phoenix spoke to Tuesday night, Griffore said he won’t vote for Byron Donalds and may in fact vote for David Jolly in November.
“The reason being, if we always just blanket vote for who our party puts up front, well then how are we going to get real change?” he said. “If we can always just have people funding our primaries, and then we’re just going to vote for them anyway because we’re a red state? How are we ever going to have real change?”
Hoffman believes many in Tuesday crowd had never voted in a Republican primary before, “so are we missing votes if they didn’t exist in the equation already?”
Fishback campaigned against data centers, Flock cameras, and H-1B visas. He frequently invoked his Christian faith and promised every abortion clinic would be shut down if he had the power to do so. He targeted Donalds by calling him a “slave” to corporate interests and a “DEI Republican.” His strong criticisms of the Israeli government led to accusations of antisemitism.
Tuesday night, Nick Fuentes, a far-right activist known for his antisemitic views, effusively praised Fishback’s campaign.
“He is truly a model that everyone should look up towards,” Fuentes said. “That is what a proto-groyper president is gonna look, sound and act like.”
Controversies
How wild was Fishback’s campaign? Here’s a sampling of some of the non-policy issues that emerged since he entered the governor’s race late last year:
- A federal judge rule that he owes his former hedge fund employer, Greenlight Capital, more than $1.3 million for breaching his employment agreement by misappropriating and disseminating Greenlight’s confidential information.
- Was sued for allegedly stiffing a high school debate champion by not delivering $8,000 in scholarship money she won from a company he founded.
- Avoided being thrown off the ballot after gubernatorial candidate Jay Collins went to court to challenge whether he had violated the state’s seven-year residency requirement. In a court hearing, Fishback acknowledged he had voted in Washington, D.C., in 2020 and held a homestead exemption there. However, a Leon County judge agreed Fishback hadn’t meant to establish residency in D.C. and said it wasn’t the court’s job to decide who would become Florida’s next governor.
- Selected a running mate, Sean Lozano, who’d been fired from the Lauderhill Police Department and deemed “permanently unfit for duty” and is now being investigated for his conduct in a particular incident there by the Broward County State Attorney’s office.
- Made various comments perceived as being racist and antisemitic and was banned from the Republican Party of Florida’s “Sunshine Showdown Summit” in June that he had originally been invited to.
- Alleged Donalds was under federal investigation for sex trafficking. “They are investigating him because there is credible evidence that he committed a serious crime,” Fishback said in a press release. The Department of Justice announced the next day that it was not.
“Obviously, the accusations were some of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard in my life,” Donalds told the Phoenix two days later in Tampa. “And I’ve heard some doozies in my years in politics. … It’s unfortunate that people decide they just want to assassinate your character because they have not proven any ability to be competitive and win on their own, so they have to stoop to that level.”
The movement
In his concession speech, Fishback said while his candidacy has ended, the movement behind it has not.
“Our opposition had over $100 million,” he said. “We had one percent of that. And yet, we secured 10 times as many votes as the dollars we raised because this campaign from the beginning has not been about AIPAC, it’s been about impact here in Florida. The truth is that it’s quite fitting that our movement has taken to new heights.
“Remember how they tried to sue us off the ballot. Not because they were afraid of me, but because they were afraid of you. Remember the attack ad during the World Cup? They knew this race would turn out the next generation, and the next generation is fed up. Now is the time to recommit ourselves to the founding values that set this great nation into motion.”
