Exclusive — Establishment GOP in Northeast Florida Panics as Conservatives Take Over Local Party, Endorse Outsider Candidates
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SAINT AUGUSTINE, Florida — Establishment Republicans here in Northeast Florida are scrambling after grassroots conservatives successfully took control of the Saint Johns County Republican Party and endorsed a slate of candidates against more establishment types inside the GOP.
The moves could have serious implications for the United States Congress, as one of the most contentious but thus far under-the-radar congressional primaries in the country is at the heart of what’s happening here on the ground. If the establishment candidate wins, business-as-usual is likely to continue unabated in Washington at least for the time being. If the grassroots candidate wins, it could send a shockwave through Washington so sharp it’d jolt those at the center of power at their cores.
Dating back several months now, much earlier this year, the now former chairman of the Saint Johns County Republican Executive Committee (REC) Blake Paterson—by all accounts a grassroots conservative—was ousted from his position. In the wake of his ouster, the county party’s vice chairman Jaime Parham took the reins until an election was held in the spring to elect a full-time chairman for the rest of the election cycle. At the meeting where the election was scheduled, grassroots conservative Denver Cook—who himself is a candidate for another local office—won the election. After Cook won the election, the Saint Johns County GOP formally then endorsed a slate of grassroots candidates in the upcoming Aug. 20 primary for a number of offices locally and perhaps most importantly for the U.S. Congress here in Florida’s fifth congressional district when the party endorsed Mara Macie for the House.
Saint Johns County is one of two counties contained at least partially within the boundaries of the fifth U.S. congressional district in Florida.
The current representative is Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL), a very establishment member of Congress whose voting record in favor of swamp deals in Washington has infuriated constituents who find it difficult to get a hold of their congressman. Rutherford’s voting record is truly terrible in every respect. He has voted for every single big government spending deal—in large part because he sits on the House Appropriations Committee—that funds Democrat priorities in Washington. He also was one of the 25 establishment Republicans who after the ouster of now former Speaker Kevin McCarthy banded together to block House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) from winning the Speakership. He was even the deciding vote to reauthorize the FBI’s warrantless surveillance through the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of American citizens earlier this year.
But that’s not the worst of it: Rutherford has also voted for every single foreign aid package sending hundreds of billions of American tax dollars to Ukraine over the past several years, and stock trades he made in connection with the Russian war in Ukraine have been a central focus of corruption investigations into his behavior. According to Business Insider, on the day Russia invaded Ukraine, Rutherford reported a massive purchase of Raytheon stock. The House Ethics Committee investigated Rutherford for some time on these stock trades, and his failures to lawfully report his trades, but eventually “cleared” him. Interestingly, Rutherford actually sits on the House Ethics Committee and the investigation was not dismissed by committee vote until just weeks after the then-ranking member Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN) died in a tragic car crash. There are many, many unanswered questions about Rutherford’s activities on these fronts, and his refusal thus far to debate his primary challenger or sit for actual news interviews makes it difficult to obtain answers from him.
Rutherford is facing a stronger-than-expected challenge from grassroots conservative Mara Macie, who has been a frequent guest on Breitbart News radio on SiriusXM 125 the Patriot Channel. Macie, the wife of Navy whistleblower Ted Macie—who spoke out against the COVID vaccine mandates in the military and rose to prominence as one of the leading critics of the jab—has emerged as a tour-de-force of grassroots politics at the local level, winning people over while knocking doors and fighting from the ground up. If she’s able to overcome Rutherford in the upcoming Aug. 20 primary here in Florida, it will be a true testament to the strength of the grassroots and the bottom-up organizing she has led. With the exception of a lone donation from Col. Rob Maness’s Gator PAC—Maness is a grassroots conservative who once ran for the U.S. Senate in Louisiana, a very anti-establishment guy—Macie has taken zero PAC dollars. Her fundraising comes purely from the grassroots.
This district may represent the only opportunity anywhere in America this year for grassroots conservatives to, in a primary, take out an establishment Republican. Cook’s shocking and surprise victory at the local level paved the way for Macie’s chances at winning the seat. She still has an uphill battle—she’s being outspent big time as the establishment continues to fund Rutherford, albeit at lesser levels than many other establishment incumbents elsewhere nationwide—and a few weeks to go. Rutherford, meanwhile, won–like so many other incumbent Republicans nationwide–an endorsement from former President Donald Trump. Trump sent out a Truth Social post a couple months ago but has not said a word since. It’s unclear how seriously invested Trump is in this race other than trying to run up his statistics and improve his already impressive win-loss ratio with endorsements, but Trump has hardly ever worked against incumbent Republican members of Congress. This cycle, the most notable time Trump did it was against now outgoing Rep. Bob Good (R-VA), where Trump endorsed state Sen. John McGuire against him in the primary. McGuire won in a nail-biter that took weeks after election day to lock in.
But the endorsement that might matter more here is the one Macie has won from the Saint Johns County GOP. Saint Johns County is one of the two counties in the district, and having the formal GOP endorse against a sitting member is extremely rare even in a world of rising anti-establishment politicians nationwide. The endorsement even came after Trump’s backing of Rutherford, and the people here in Saint Johns County are mega-Trump fans. In fact, even the establishment types fashion themselves as Trump supporters and literally call their events “The Trump Club.” So, ultimately, when the local party bucks someone as powerful and as revered as Trump to call for the ouster of their longtime congressman, they are showing just how angry they are with him. (For whatever it’s worth, these folks will still follow Trump to the end of the earth and vote for him in the record numbers he’s become accustomed to from Northeast Florida–and they do not blame him for Rutherford at all).
For context, Saint Johns County is one of the wealthier counties in Florida–right up there with Naples, which is far down on the other side, the Gulf Coast side, of Florida. Home to Ponte Vedra, a donor enclave, this is a powerful fundraising ground floor for national politicians. It’s from here where now Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis first hit the national political stage as the U.S. Congressman in the nearby sixth congressional district–the boundaries were different back when he was in Congress–as it’s a deep-red area. In fact, people here are so hardcore that when DeSantis decided to run against Trump they were furious with their previously beloved governor–and encouraged all their members of Congress to endorse Trump over DeSantis. Most of Florida’s congressional delegation obliged, including Rutherford–ironically, perhaps the only time Rutherford ever listened to his constituents.
But the point is this is a Republican district. Democrats don’t stand a chance in November. Whoever wins the Republican nomination here is almost certainly going to win the general election. The Cook Political Report’s Partisan Voting Index rates this district as an R-plus-11, which means there is an 11-point GOP advantage over Democrats built into the registration numbers for voters here between Republicans and Democrats.
For Macie to win the primary, she has to win and run up the score here in Saint Johns County then come very close to Rutherford’s totals if not defeating him up in the more establishment-friendly Duval County, home to Jacksonville. Macie has talked about this all on Breitbart News Saturday as recently as this past weekend. The Duval County GOP is still run by establishment types, and has blocked any efforts by its conservative membership to endorse Macie–though those efforts have happened at recent meetings, and the establishment folks there are growing restless as well. In fact, Rutherford himself was at a recent meeting when one person shouted at him in front of the whole room that he is too chicken to debate Macie–and the chairman scrambled to regain control of the conversation and cut the conservative’s microphone off.
In addition to the Macie endorsement, the Saint Johns County Republican Party under Cook’s leadership has also poked the establishment bear by endorsing several conservative challengers to more establishment-minded candidates for several other local offices as well. Those have major implications in terms of local policy, but also possibly setting folks up for the future beyond those offices. Many of the establishment candidates view these local offices as stepping stones to bigger political futures.
As such, because of how turbulent these actions have been to the old guard of the old establishment of the GOP here in Northeast Florida, loyalists to the old establishment—including Parham, who remains the vice chairman of the Saint Johns GOP after he lost to Cook—have been attempting to delegitimize the conservative victories locally. Some of them, including Parham himself, have taken to social media to repeatedly suggest that Cook is not the legitimate chairman of the Saint Johns County GOP. They have then argued that as such, the endorsements of the party were not legitimate.
So, Breitbart News set out to determine who the legitimate chairman of the Saint Johns County GOP is. The chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Evan Power, made it extremely clear in a statement to Breitbart News that not only is Cook the legitimate chairman of the Saint Johns County GOP but that Cook has been following party rules in everything he’s been doing—and that means that the endorsements from the Saint Johns County GOP are in fact legitimate in the eyes of the Republican Party of Florida.
“Denver Cook is Chairman,” Power told Breitbart News. “After the removal of the previous chairman, RPOF made sure that a fair election was held to select a replacement. Since then, Chairman Cook has been working with our team to make sure our rules are followed in the operation of the committee.”
Obviously, the state party is not endorsing in these races–the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida is just making clear that it views the chairman of the Saint Johns GOP to be the legitimate chairman and the actions he has taken in his time as chair to be legitimate too. But that simple confirmation will send shudders down establishment spines, for sure.
When asked to react to Power’s statement, Cook was pleased that the Republican Party of Florida has formally put an end to the nonsense.
“As Chairman, I wish to thank the RPOF leadership for their ongoing support and assistance as we work through many challenges, including as we successfully endorsed eight candidates in the August 20 Primary,” Cook told Breitbart News. “The voices calling our operations and our endorsement process ‘illegitimate’ are doing so in an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the RPOF and the Saint Johns County Republican Party for personal political and financial gain.”
Macie also expressed her gratitude to the state party for setting the record straight.
“It is unfortunate that the establishment, their PACs, their associated clubs, and their supporters have been working to discredit the validity of both the SJC GOP Chair election and the endorsements made by the GOP assembly thereafter,” Macie told Breitbart News. “I am happy that the RPOF has decided to come forward and set the record straight publicly, leaving the SJC GOP able to focus on winning elections rather than battling unfounded and desperate rumors.”
More reporting on the race between Macie and Rutherford is forthcoming.
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