19 August 2026 - 12:45pm
Yesterday evening the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary was called for Rep. Byron Donalds, the Trump-endorsed and corporate-backed establishment candidate, who won 47.8% of the vote. Leading up to the election, Donalds’s main primary challenger was thought to be someone far removed from the Republican establishment: the online-Right, Groyper-courting James Fishback. Though he wasn’t expected to win, it was largely assumed that he would come in second place. Instead, Fishback only secured 10.5% of the vote, while the far less online Florida Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins managed 25.2%.
It’s surprising that someone like Fishback got this far, and his candidacy reflects the evolution of much of American populism into full-blown shock-jock presentation. During his campaign, the gubernatorial hopeful started a feud with prominent OnlyFans creator Sophie Rain, made reference to “goyslop” (the antisemitic theory that goyim, or non-Jews, are fed bad food by their Jewish overlords), and abruptly got married three months after his split from another woman.
Fishback was also no stranger to racial edgelording. He repeatedly referred to his opponent Donalds, who is black, as “By’rone”, and in April even held a campaign event at Cafe Bich Nga, a Vietnamese restaurant in the Tampa Bay Area that he labelled Donalds’s “favorite restaurant”. He appeared on stream with manosphere personality Sneako and looksmaxxing influencer Clavicular. Nick Fuentes, the arch-Groyper himself, endorsed him. And while none of this won Fishback the primary, it was enough to secure college precincts across the state, a sign that such rhetoric does indeed sell with the young Right — at least for now.
He was certainly a new type of candidate, one who revelled in extremity to appeal to the young while frequently sounding reasonable to an older audience. That other version of Fishback was merely a staunch localist and “constitutional conservative” who invoked Ronald Reagan in his closing argument speech on Monday. This play, obviously, proved unsuccessful. His third-place finish is a reminder that going viral on X and being the subject of countless newspaper profiles doesn’t win you the Republican nomination for governor in America’s third-largest state, however much a contrarian “Florida Man” streak may run through many of its voters.
In the state’s 6th congressional district, meanwhile, an even more controversial long-shot candidate managed to do better in his own race than Fishback did. Despite doing next to no campaigning, the brazenly antisemitic, macho online personality Dan Bilzerian finished second with 18.7% of the vote. The winner was Trump-backed Rep. Randy Fine, who has said that “the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one” and invited Gazans to “starve away”.
If there’s one lesson from all this, it’s that while Florida is a weird place, establishment politicians — barring an exceptionally impressive opponent — tend to win in the end. Another takeaway is that there’s clearly still some time left until that much-feared “Groyper takeover” of the Republican Party.
