The ragebait candidate who wants to govern Florida

It can be hard to make sense of James Fishback. The longshot Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate is the son of an immigrant and fiercely nativist, a self-proclaimed finance success story turned economic populist, and both pro-Trump and running against President Donald Trump’s chosen candidate. He’s also openly racist and antisemitic.

But one thing is for sure: He’s getting a lot of attention. 

Fishback is “someone who I think typically couldn’t be elected for dog catcher. But he’s kind of catching on,” Will Sommer, a senior reporter at the Bulwark, told Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram recently. “He’s gaining in the polls, and while he still probably won’t win, I think he’s offering us a face of one potential future for the Republican Party.”

Sommer spoke with Sean about Fishback’s history, the movement he represents, and what could be next for him in Republican politics. Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full episode, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Where did this dude come from?

Just about nowhere. He was in finance. He was, apparently, according to court documents, a pretty low-level employee at a hedge fund. And then, he styled himself as this real hedge-fund expert. 

They claim he made up his title, and that kind of became a meme in the finance community, because it was just so ridiculous. But through that, he managed to get on Fox Business a lot and leverage that into appearing that he’s this expert financier type.

And to further complicate the shape-shifting identity of this white supremacist candidate: He’s not… super… white.

This is one of the fascinating things about him. He’s extremely racist to Byron Donalds, the congressman who’s been endorsed by Trump, who’s the frontrunner in the Florida governor’s race. 

At the same time, his mother is Colombian, and so he’s half Colombian. This is something we’re seeing more of, I think: this racial extremism in Florida among Hispanic people. 

There was recently a leak of young Republicans who are Hispanic in Miami being extremely racist, and he’s become the face of, or one of the faces of, the white nationalist — the so-called “Groyper” — movement that surrounds the podcaster Nick Fuentes.

Remind people who don’t pay attention to Nick Fuentes and the Groypers what they’re all about.

Nick Fuentes is a young man in his late 20s who marched in Charlottesville. [He’s an] avowed racist and antisemite who has styled himself — particularly after the murder of Charlie Kirk, which created a vacuum — as the racist face of young Republicanism.

What does the Venn diagram look like between Nick Fuentes, and the racist Groypers, and this longshot candidate for Florida governor, James Fishback?

I would say that the Venn diagram is just about a circle. 

James Fishback has really welcomed the Groypers’ support. Nick Fuentes has been very complimentary towards him. Fishback will pose for pictures with people in Nick Fuentes merchandise. He’s very close with this right-wing media figure who said she’s going to have some more kids and make some more young Groypers. 

They’re very closely aligned, and I think Fishback is interesting, because he is probably the closest we’ve come to a Nick Fuentes/Groyper-type political candidate. And his relative success suggests that that kind of candidate has some runway among Gen Z Republicans.

Nick Fuentes is interesting to talk about this moment because he’s a white supremacist, but he also says he wants to vote for Democrats in the next election. How does that affect someone like Fishback? Where does he sit in the ideological spectrum? 

Fishback represents this growing discontent among young Republicans with the Trump administration — particularly over support for Israel and the war with Iran, but more broadly this sense that Trump isn’t doing anything about affordability to help young people own homes and start families. 

It’s this populist — to be frank, quasi-fascist — kind of government stepping in to control families, to control businesses. One of his proposals is that, in a marriage, if someone cheats, they should lose all of the marital assets, which, to me, I think would just incentivize spousal murder, if you’re going to be a pauper if you get divorced. 

He has these ideas where people go, Oh, yeah, that’s true, even though it’s crazy. 

To underline one more, he talks about housing affordability in Florida, but a lot of his ideas are either onerous taxes on anyone who moves to Florida or somehow banning people from moving to Florida. [It’s a] really heavy-handed government vision that he’s proposing.

The New York Times opinion writer Michelle Goldberg went and hung out at Fishback events in Florida. She met a registered Democrat, a Zohran Mamdani fan, who said that she was thinking of changing her registration to vote for Fishback in the primary. 

Who is he speaking to? How big is his tent?

Fishback is benefiting from a couple of things. One is you do have people who are legitimately alienated from normal politics, and because he’s this unusual candidate, they’re latching onto him. 

On the other hand, he’s also benefiting from this poisoned information ecosystem. Someone else in the Michelle Goldberg piece says they got into Fishback because they saw Kanye West post a graphic about Jews controlling the media. 

There’s just this crazy online ecosystem that favors seeking attention, and Fishback certainly does that. He has these mobs that go to Waffle Houses for events. He’ll say these eye-catching ideas like public executions for anyone associated with Jeffrey Epstein or taxing OnlyFans creators at 50 percent of their income, and this then creates a feud with some OnlyFans stars. 

He’s been able to get attention in a lot of different ways despite running sort of a shoestring campaign.

You said earlier he doesn’t really have a shot, but he’s getting enough attention to be worth talking about, because he appears to have some influence here. What does he parlay that into, if not running Florida?

These days, being a right-wing media figure is in many ways better than being a politician — maybe not governor, but we’ve seen someone like deputy FBI director Dan Bongino quit to go back to podcasting. 

If you want influence, in a lot of ways it’s better to be someone like Candace Owens or Megyn Kelly with a huge YouTube platform than a random congressman. 

In some ways, James Fishback is trying to play on that. And he’s young; he could run for office in the future. There’s this sense that he, despite being frankly just a big-time charlatan in many ways, is harnessing this discontent among young people.

Do the young people think he’s genuine? Because hearing you talk about his experience, or lack thereof, it seems like he’s just someone who’s taken advantage of whatever zeitgeist is in front of him to increase his own popularity.

Some people you’ll meet, they’re just weeping. They’re meeting a huge celebrity. They just love Fishback. 

On the other hand, I think a lot of these Groyper-type figures, they’re very cynical about politics in general. They would love to see a fascist America, but they see Fishback as a useful vehicle. 

He’s a guy who has a certain amount of charisma that appeals to some people, and they see him as someone who’s able to capture some energy and also show this discontent within the Republican Party.