An Unsettling Glimpse Into the GOP’s Future
Normally, when a primary candidate finishes with 10.5 percent of the vote, it is a clear signal of their irrelevance.
James Fishback finished third in Tuesday’s Florida Republican gubernatorial primary, and at no point in the race did it seem like he ever had a chance.
In fact, at no point in his broader career has the 31-year-old, who is known for his racist slurs and unabashed bigotry, achieved anything of note.
The high-school-debate nonprofit he founded was hit with allegations that he had sexually groomed a 17-year-old employee.
A hedge fund where he’d once worked said that it had planned on firing him before he resigned, and accused him of claiming a job title that had never existed at the firm.
He founded his own investment firm but left after the board decided to shut down the funds he managed.
Fishback told me that he had left the firm to run for governor.
He claims to have been an adviser to DOGE—but former senior DOGE officials have denied it .
However, Fishback is defiantly proud of his showing, despite losing the primary to Representative Byron Donalds and also finishing well behind Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins.
“I would much rather have gotten 10 percent and done all of this and really moved the needle in political discourse,” he told me today, “than have gotten 24 percent like Jay Collins did and have nothing to show for it.” Despite his penchant for spectacular, serial failure, Fishback matters because he managed to figure out at least one thing: how to capture attention from the youthful right.
Heading into Election Night, this was the one area where Fishback appeared to excel.
A February poll from the University of North Florida found Fishback to be the leading candidate among GOP primary voters under 35, with 31 percent supporting him.
By July, that number was up to 51 percent, according to a Change Research poll paid for by the conservative nonprofit Freedom Project USA.
His candidacy was, in some respects, a test run for what might work with the next generation of Republican voters.
5News aggregated this summary from the outlet’s public feed. The full article, with all the context, is on www.theatlantic.com — the content belongs to The Atlantic.
