“RUN, RANDY, RUN!”
That was Donald Trump on November 23 of last year, urging Florida state Sen. Randy Fine to run for U.S. congress in an upcoming special election that was supposed to affirm the might of MAGA.
Instead, the April 1 contest seems sure to demonstrate that there is a limit to Trump’s power.
Back in November, Trump bestowed on Fine what was presumed to be all a Republican candidate from a bright red district—two to one Republicans over Democrats—needed for overwhelming victory.
“A Harvard Educated, Successful Businessman, and Highly Respected State Legislator, Randy has been an incredible Voice for MAGA, and the Great People of Florida,” Trump posted. “Should he decide to enter this Race, Randy Fine has my Complete and Total Endorsement.”
Trump praised Fine as an “America first patriot.”
But Fine had really secured the endorsement by being a Trump first parrot.
The sycophantic Fine was in particular the first Florida lawmaker to jump from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to Trump during the 2024 presidential primary.
Prior to that switch, Fine had made himself known as DeSantis’ attack dog in the culture wars that the governor hoped would send him to the White House. Fine led the charge in the state legislature against all things woke, from mask mandates to drag shows to “don’t say gay” to supposed porn in library books to parental rights to critical race theory to DEI to Disney.

But all that was eclipsed by MAGA, and Fine went from DeSantis rottweiler to Trump lap dog. Fine knew just how to respond when Trump urged him to run for the seat in Florida’s sixth congressional district, which was vacated by Mike Waltz when he was appointed National Security Adviser.
“Mr. President, [God] saved you on that day in Butler so that you could save the world. It would be the honor of my life to be one of your foot soldiers. Your confidence is overwhelming and I will have news to share soon!” Fine wrote on X.
The impact of a Trump endorsement was demonstrated by the results of the January 28 primary between Fine and two fellow Republicans. Fine got 87.7 percent of the primary vote - seemingly tantamount to winning the April 1 general. No Democrats would have appeared to be much of a threat, and the particular one in this contest initially seemed even less so. A middle school school teacher named Josh Weil had won the two-person Democratic race with 67.9 percent of the vote as a self-described “proud progressive,” which seemed to be a synonym for pathetic loser in an election.
But two factors threatened to turn the race from a rout into a reality check.
One was Weil retaining Key Lime Strategies and Media. The tech-driven marketing firm used what it described to the Daily Beast as “a vast array of digital networks that we’re very proud to have worked on over the years” to tap into anti-Trump sentiment nationwide.
The Democratic Party may be in disarray and largely leaderless, but many individual Americans are alarmed and outraged by the autocratic actions of the new administration. Key Lime used texts rather than mailers and online videos more than TV ads to trigger more personal responses and it raised $9.5 million for Weil. (It had a hiccup when it clashed with two prominent Democrats—Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez and Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg—over the unauthorized use of their voices in their ads, but that did little to stop the cash coming in.)

By comparison, Republican Randy Fine had raised less than $1 million.
That relatively paltry sum suggests Fine anticipated an easy coast to victory and saw no urgency to raise campaign cash.
But the little bucks also point to what appears to be the second major factor in changing the race from a cinch into a maybe; Randy Fine himself. Not even a Trump endorsement can make this former Nevada casino consultant into an actually appealing candidate once his petty and choleric aspects become apparent. Those same qualities are forgiven on a large scale with Trump, but a mini-Donald just becomes a vituperative, vengeful brat.
Fine had managed to subsume his real self enough to have become a second-term state representative from Brevard County when the pandemic hit in 2020. Fine had a bad enough case of COVID-19 that he could have been extinguished altogether and he came out of the hospital saying it was important to wear masks when venturing outside the home.

Fine changed his position when DeSantis and other MAGA types became increasingly fervent anti-maskers. He became incensed when a teacher named Jennifer Jenkins who was running for the Brevard County school board asked him at a public meeting in August of 2020 if he supported mask mandates.
“He didn’t like it when I asked him publicly if he and his wife supported a mask mandate,” Jenkins recalled.
Jenkins, a speech pathologist and a mom, considered a pro-mask mandate to be the only sane position in a district whose schools had the highest infection rate in Florida.
“We only have 70,000 students,” she told the Daily Beast. “At one point, we had about 3,500 students positive with COVID. And we had lost 10 staff members.”

Jenkins says she was barred from attending a press conference in 2021 where Fine joined DeSantis in opposing mask mandates. Anti-maskers swarmed Jenkins’ residence that night. One protester coughed in her face.
“Randy Fine says hello,” the protester said, by Jenkins’ account
Fine raged on with a series of online postings in which he called the school board member a “whore” and “Jezebel, Jenkins,” falsely accusing her of having an extramarital affair with a sex offender. Fine was doing this even as he was pushing a bill to crack down on cyber-bullying.
As he pushed anti-trans legislation, Fine claimed that a trans student had sexually assaulted a girl in a restroom at a Brevard County middle school and that the school authorities had covered it up. Jenkins felt sure the supposed incident was bogus.
“The whole thing is made up,” Jenkins told The Daily Beast. “There’s not even a fake allegation from a student. Nothing exists. There’s no student, there’s no victim, there’s no assailant, there’s nothing. None of this is real.”
Jenkins filed a lawsuit seeking any public records of the supposed attack. And she moved to subpoena Fine to get to the bottom of it. A process server she sent to Fine’s office made a video that appears to show Fine hiding behind his desk. He later said that he was afraid it was an antisemitic attack. Jenkins reported that her lawyer had called Fine in advance to tell him the process server was coming.
That was in September of 2023. A month later Fine made the big jump from DeSantis to Trump.
The governor had something to say about Fine last week as polls were showing the special election had turned competitive, with Weil coming within the margin of error. DeSantis noted that he had carried that same district by a considerable margin in 2022, as had Trump in 2024.
“I will tell you this, regardless of the outcome in that it’s going to be a way under performance,” DeSantis said of the special election. “They’re going to try to lay that at the feet of President Trump. That is not a reflection of President Trump. It’s a reflection of the specific candidate running in that race, and President Trump, if he were on the ballot in this special election, he would win by 30 points, no question.”
In other words, it’s on Randy Fine.
Fine was term-limited from the state house of representatives, but he successfully rode MAGA into the state senate in 2024 only to be forced to step down by Florida’s resign-to-run law in advance of the congressional special election, the eve of the election was his last day in office and he went out as the ultimate MAGA minion, introducing bills banning Pride flags from government buildings and lower the minimum age to purchase a rifle back up from 21 to 18 and permitting college kids to carry concealed weapons on campus.
As chair of the Senate Committee on Governmental Oversight and Accountability he held a hearing on a bill to keep public employees from being required to use people’s preferred pronouns. He restricted public comments to 30 seconds. He called out after one man who had stepped up to the podium wearing a keffiyeh.
“Enjoy your terrorist rag,” Fine said.
That triggered a predictable uproar among the spectators.
“I’m the chairman,” Fine said. “I can say what I want. If you don’t like it you can leave.”
Weil responded, “Randy Fine has no respect for Floridians and people who disagree with him. His comments are always intended to fearmonger—he is not the type of leader who will be looking out for FL-06 voters, only for himself.”
Fine’s reply was classic Fine, which is to say mini-Trump, including name-calling.
“And so, of course, he wants to legitimize the use of this terrorist rag, just like the Nazis wanted to legitimize the use of the swastika. It is no different. He believes in Muslim terror. He’s not afraid to say it. And voters have to decide, do they want jihad Josh Weil? Or do they want someone like me who’s willing to fight for American values?”
But only Trump can pull off Trump. The derivative persona becomes diminutive and just comes across as mean. First buddy Elon Musk gave Fine only $20,000 while handing out million dollar checks to voters in Wisconsin in a lottery for those who signed a petition in a state judge race.
Not even Trump himself has seemed greatly enthused about Fine since he acquired a whiff of loser. Mar-a-Lago is just a helicopter ride away from the contested district, but Trump has made no appearances on Fine’s behalf. The closest he has come was a remote “tele-rally” on Thursday evening.
“We’re just a few days away from an all-important special election taking place in your state on Tuesday, April 1, and I’m asking you to get out and vote for a true American patriot, somebody that I’ve gotten to know very well, Randy Fine,” Trump said.
The problem for Fine is that too many voters have gotten to know him too well. And an actual loss or even a surprisingly poor showing would reflect on Trump no matter what DeSantis says.
On Monday morning, Trump was compelled to re-endorse Fine. Trump essentially repeated what he said when he first urged Run, Randy, Run. He then added, “Randy Fine has my Complete and Total Endorsement! Election Day is this Tuesday, April 1st. GET OUT AND VOTE FOR RANDY — HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!”
Maybe Trump realizes that however it goes, Tuesday’s election is likely to show there is a limit to his power, even if it just comes to elevating one of the more odious of his many mini-Donalds.