Trump’s Grip on Florida Tested by Upstart Conservative

After Democrats scored victories last Tuesday across the map, the Trump political machine now confronts an irksome new challenge from the right: James Fishback, a Florida conservative running for governor of that state.

He plans to canvass specifically on the affordability question, Fishback told RealClearPolitics, calling it “the number one focus of my campaign.” But Trump allies, including White House deputy chief of staff James Blair, would rather he not run at all.

Trump already has a candidate in mind to succeed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. He endorsed Rep. Byron Donalds in February, helping that congressman to amass a war chest of $30 million and jump out to an early lead. “Some of the most ‘powerful’ people in DC have told me not to run,” Fishback wrote on social media Tuesday while citing recent Politico reporting. A maelstrom in miniature commenced.

“This guy is invoking my name to say he’s a tough guy standing up to D.C. or something. It’s a lie. I’ve spoken to him twice for a total of 2 minutes. Never ‘urged him not to run.’ This is our whole conversation about it,” Blair replied in an X post. “I never called. Free advice: don’t lie.”

Then Blair posted a screenshot of an October text exchange he had with Fishback, including one message that concluded, “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

“You never called? You literally called me yesterday, and told me not to run,” Fishback fired back in a post complete with his own screenshot, this one of an incoming call from Blair.

The rebuke from Trump World was unusual. While the president’s people have shown no qualms about crushing dissent, Fishback faces an uphill battle for the nomination. The 30-year-old has never held elected office, and though he serves as CEO of the investment firm Azoria, he is not in a position to self-fund his campaign. And yet the reaction to his candidacy was akin to “anaphylactic shock in D.C.,” he said. Asked the conservative, “What are they afraid of?”

“We don’t coronate, we don’t delegate, and we don’t designate. In Florida, we elect,” Fishback said of the coming electoral contest that will pit him against Trump’s anointed champion. “We still have primary elections,” he said of the race set for next August.

The kerfuffle comes after Democrats won race after race on a simple argument. The cost of living, left and far-left candidates alike said, remains too damn high. Voters were unhappy with the economy when they voted to return Trump to the White House last November. According to polling and election results last week, they remain unhappy a year later. Not unlike Democrats before them, Republicans plead for patience. All they need is time, they insist, for the effects of their reforms to kick in.

And here, Fishback sees an opening. But to exploit it, he will have to further defy the administration and test the limits of the president’s political power in the process, something few Republicans have been willing to try.

“James Carville said, ‘It’s the economy, stupid,’” the candidate recalled, pointing to the simple strategy that helped make Bill Clinton president.

“Then during Biden, it was ‘You’re stupid; the economy is fine,’” he added of the former president who over-hyped economic progress to his own political detriment.

Turning his attention to the current president, Fishback concluded, “Now it’s ‘You’re a con artist; the economy is perfect.’”

It was a reference to a question Laura Ingraham put to Trump on Monday. When the Fox News host asked if affordability was a “voter perception issue” or if more work remains, the president replied that affordability concerns were over-hyped and a “con job by the Democrats.”

Trump disputed the fact that voters are even anxious about the economy at all. “I don’t know that they are saying that. I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had,” he told Fox News. “We will have over 20 trillion dollars come into our economy, and it’s largely because of my election, but it’s also largely because of tariffs.”

A lifelong Florida resident who voted for Trump three times, Fishback said, “That is not what I am seeing in my state.” He has surveyed instead a landscape where families are better off after Biden but still struggling under Trump. “There is a real crisis happening,” he said before adding, “It is not a hoax.” To recognize it is to split with the leader of his own party. Before officially launching his campaign, Fishback has launched twin broadsides against the economic agenda of the administration. His candidacy now represents a proxy for the still quite Republican dissatisfaction with the state of the economy.

“It is a disgraceful insult,” Fishback said of the 50-year mortgage, Trump’s latest floated proposal to address the housing crisis. Increasing the life of a home loan might lower monthly payments by a few hundred dollars, he argued, but it will inevitably increase the interest borrowers must pay by hundreds of thousands of dollars.

His proposal for Florida? First, ban investment firms, like Blackstone, from buying rental homes and restricting supply. Second, provide a tax credit for purchasing and rebuilding abandoned properties. But it’s the centerpiece of his plan that puts him in direct confrontation with the president.

“What I would do as governor is I would upend the H1B program, using my unique powers at the state-level to make sure that Florida workers are the first in line to get jobs,” he said. “Because without a job, you can’t buy a home. Without a home, you can’t start a family. Without starting a family, you can’t have kids. Without kids,” he concluded, “well, then what’s the point?”

Trump recently angered his own base when he appeared to go soft on the visa program that allows corporations to hire foreign workers for specialized jobs. During the Monday interview with Fox News, he said that the country lacked people with “certain talents.”

It was not possible, the president added, to “take people off an unemployment line and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory where we’re going to make missiles.’”

Pro-worker policies and an obsession with inflation rates were a hallmark of the Trump campaign. Fishback credits that emphasis as “the reason why so many Democrats switched over and voted for the president.” He believes Trump has drifted away from those issues as the first year of his second term draws to a close and thinks “the president has gotten bad advice” when it comes to winning in his state.

“If we elect the wrong candidate as our nominee in the Republican primary in Florida,” he warned, “there’s a very good chance the Democrat would win.” This seems as unlikely as it would be historic. Republicans haven’t lost a race for governor in Florida in more than a quarter-century.

Then again, few candidates have defied Trump from the right.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.