Ron DeSantis Torches Republican Randy Fine After He Wins In Florida Special Election

2 days ago

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) reacts to the victories of GOP candidates in Tuesday's Special Congressional elections.

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00:00out and we'll see we'll see how it ends up.

00:08Well, what happened with the Randy Fine is exactly what I said. He would win but

00:12underperform and that's what happened. President won that by 30 points in 24.

00:17I want it by 35 plus points in 2022. Fine is out there saying he won by the

00:22same margin I did. That is a total, total lie. I won by more than twice

00:28that he did in 2022 in that district. And so what happened there? The media

00:34is saying, oh, you know, Republicans had to had to spend money and they did.

00:38They spent millions and millions of dollars in 24. Not one cent had to be

00:43spent in outside money in this district because I don't know if this are we

00:47actually in this that district. I know he's got part of Marion, so it's a

00:50little over there. Um, and so the fact that money had to be spent, you know,

00:54that's not a good thing. Uh, this should have been going away. And what

00:58happened was and so the media is trying to say, oh, see, it shows. I think the

01:02Wall Street Journal said something about this is like an anti Maga

01:06backlash. I don't think that's true at all for for this district. I think you

01:09have a candidate in Randy Fine who won. He's a squish. Okay. He supported

01:15restrictions on Second Amendment rights back in 2018. He tried to defeat my

01:21immigration proposal to help President Trump enforce immigration laws, and he

01:26tried to enact a de facto sanctuary, make Florida de facto sanctuary state.

01:30So when people see that our base voters don't get excited about that, you're

01:35not giving him a reason to go out and vote. And he's also just the way he

01:39conducts himself is somebody. He repels people. He's repelled people in the

01:44Legislature. He's repelled. They wanted to get him out of the Legislature, so

01:47they asked me to put him up for Florida Atlantic president. I did, and the whole

01:51board would have resigned rather than make him president. And so now he's

01:54gonna be in Congress. I mean, like, you know, it is what it is. So it was unique

01:58problems with this candidate that was causing this to be a close race. And I

02:03think it was trending to be be a lot closer than what happened was they put

02:07in a lot of money on the Republican side for $5 million in a Trump plus 30

02:12seat. You shouldn't had to do, but they did. And then the president did a

02:16couple tell a town halls where he said, Listen, for my agenda, we need you to

02:20go out and vote. So I think the election day turnout was really good

02:24for special election for Republicans in the district. And I attribute that to

02:28President Trump's intervention. I think these air voters who didn't like Randy

02:31fine, but who basically were like, You know what? We're gonna take one for the

02:35team. President needs another vote up there on DSO. We're gonna do it. So I

02:39do. I would not read into the underperformance that this is somehow a

02:43referendum on on on Magga or Trump. I think it was a unique issue with this

02:49particular candidate. You know, the Democrats, Democrats groups didn't spend

02:54any money. It was this one candidate raised money through act blue. But a lot

02:58of that is basically a fraud. It's a It's a scam. And so how much money he

03:02spent? He probably spent a few million, but they spent more that than that

03:05perfect for fine. So I just view it as it's an underperformance. I think it's

03:10unique to the candidate, and the president really had to bail him out at

03:14the end because this race would have been much closer had the president sat

03:19on the sidelines. And so, if anything, it shows, you know, the president's got

03:22the juice to be able to get Republicans to go out on election day and even vote

03:27for a candidate that they're not crazy about. Uh, you know, this guy, I mean,

03:30he doesn't. He lives like 150 miles away from the district. It's just an

03:34odd fit on that. But I do think that it was there were unique circumstances in

03:39that cd six race. Eso when people are trying to spin that to fit their

03:44agenda, I don't think you can. I think it was more of a local thing. I mean,

03:47this is a guy who's 150. He lived 150 miles from the district. They say,

03:51Well, how do you know local issues? He said, There are no local issues in the

03:54district. Well, I could tell you just as governor, you go around the state.

03:57There are local issues for sure that you got to contend with. Yes.

04:03Mr Simpson had the same kind of reduction in margin.

04:08And what accounts for that? I think so. One, I don't know for sure, but I think

04:14the difference is there was no money spent on behalf of Jimmy Patronus. There

04:21was five million spent on behalf of Randy Fine. If they had spent five

04:25million on Patronus, he would have had a bigger margin. The turnout would

04:29have been better on Election Day. But I think a lot of Republican voters, I

04:32think they like Jimmy. I think it was just they knew that the race was gonna

04:35go red, and so some of them didn't didn't vote. You know, our voters, we

04:39haven't done as well in special elections, getting our voters out

04:42generally. So I think the emphasis was really on the Randy Fine seat rather

04:47than Jimmy seat. And Jimmy did get outspent pretty significantly. Randy

04:52did not get outspent. If you count the pack money that came in to support him,

04:56there was millions and millions of dollars that came in to support him at

05:01the end. So I think you gotta when you look at these races and you're

05:04comparing margins, if you don't have money behind you, your margins gonna be

05:09less because not on that as many people know the election and all this stuff. So

05:13I attribute that to that. I think if they had put the same amount of effort

05:18in terms of bringing money in, I think I think Jimmy's margin would have been

05:21better. But he'll he'll he'll do a good job. I mean, he's, um, you know, that

05:26was not necessarily his district when he was a House member. So a lot of

05:30people didn't know him from that, but they did know him from

Ron DeSantis Torches Republican Randy Fine After He Wins In Florida Special Election

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