Less than two weeks after Palm Coast City Council member Charles Gambaro announced a run for Congress against incumbent Randy Fine, Will Furry, a Realtor in his first term on the Flagler County School Board, said he is running for the congressional seat.
Furry will continue serving on the School Board until the end of his term in November. He cannot run for both seats. His fate will be decided in the Aug. 18, 2026 primary, when he would be one of a slew of Republicans challenging Fine.
“The entry of another candidate into the Congressional race is another clear indicator that our current representative in Congress is not meeting the needs of the residents of District 6,” Gambaro said today. “I look forward to a spirited campaign.”
Furry’s decision opens at least two seats on the board: his District 2 seat and the District 1 seat currently held by Derek Barrs, a DeSantis appointee, and soon to turn over to another gubernatorial appointee as Barrs takes a job in the Trump administration. The District 4 seat, currently held by Christy Chong, is also up in that election. Chong has not said whether she will run again.
In 2022, Furry defeated Courtney Vande Bunte and Lance Alred to win the seat. Vande Bunte said today she is not running in 2026. Alred, an elected member of the East Flagler Mosquito Control District board, said he is undecided for now.
Three Republicans have filed to run for the congressional seat so far, not including Fine, Gambaro or Furry. (Candidates don’t have to file qualifying papers until they start taking campaign contributions.) It is likely that more will file yet as Fine’s bigoted and incendiary statements have drawn criticism from Republican ranks and made his seat vulnerable to challenge. Furry’s own turbulent tenure makes his seat vulnerable. Running for Congress on a raft of low expectations may be a face-saving way to avoid defeat in a school board race.
Never known for his political acumen or insights, Furry framed his coming campaign in the customary talking points of hard-right candidates, some of which still a better fir for a school board race than for a federal race–cut taxes, cut “wasteful spending,” support vouchers, support parental choice, support Trump and “a strong border,” and especially glory in “faith,” in line with an evangelical but inaccurate interpretation of the separation of church and state: “The way I understand the Constitution is that separation is to protect the church from the state, not the state from the church,” he said. “And I think we all have a moment in our life when we really see God do something big.”
Furry, who described himself in a statement as a “MAGA Republican and America First supporter of President Donald J. Trump,” appears to be that big thing. Speaking on GOP operative Jearlyn Dennie’s weekly infomercial on WNZF, Furry said he was called by God to run.
“He’s calling me to bring representation to the district that I live in, that I currently serve in, and have actually produced results for, and I can take that wisdom to Washington, D.C., with me,” Furry said. (The interview is airing this weekend. WNZF’s Rich Carroll first reported the announcement.)
“This is a heavy lift for me and my family and everything, and I’m willing to do that for my community,” Furry said. “I prayed to God, said, Listen, if you don’t want me to do this, close the doors. Just close them right now. But as I walked through, the doors kept opening. People started coming around me. Support started to grow, and then, you know, here we are today, announcing that I’m running for the United States Congress.”
Fine said earlier this year he decided to run to help President Trump save the world: “God saved his life so that he could save the world, and since he says he needs my help to make that happen, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
Just as Amy Carter had advised her father on nuclear policy, Furry’s youngest son influenced him on running for Congress: “I asked him, I said, so how do you feel about this?” Furry said. “You know this will cause me to be very busy, and, you know, be out of town for periods of time to serve our country. And he thought about it for a minute and pondered, and he said, Well, I get to meet Donald Trump. And I said, Well, I’ll do everything I can.”
Like Gambaro, Furry is critical of Fine and his general foreignness to the 6th Congressional District, where Fine has never lived.
“We have somebody who kind of snuck into Congress during a special election,” Furry said of the congressman. “I don’t really look at him as an incumbent. He’s more of a placeholder and wasn’t properly vetted by the electorate.”
Ten minutes into the interview, Denny asked Furry the first issue-related question: what would he do about the national debt? The question seemed to take him by surprise. “We have to cut all this wasteful spending,” he said, “pass, you know, a budget, a balanced budget amendment, and stop borrowing from our grandchildren’s futures.” He didn’t say how. Denny didn’t ask him.
Furry claimed he was “doging before doging was actually a thing here,” a reference to the acronym for the so-called “department of government efficiency” started by the Trump administration and cloned in redder states like Florida. Furry implied that he’d cut spending at the school district.
“The previous administration had spent our reserves down to a dangerous level where, when I had our first budget meeting, they had said that we were one percentage point away from the state coming in and taking over our books,” he said. “That’s how bad our finances were when I took over the school board. But then in just two years, we restored that reserve from around $3, a little over $3 million, to over just about $9 million.”
Furry was fabricating. The district’s reserves never fell to $3 million. The last budget on the “previous administration”’s watch, in July 2022, had a $6.5 million reserve. Furry was seated that November. In his first budget, for the 2023-24 fiscal year, eight months into his tenure, the reserve had fallen to $6 million. It was $9 million this July, buttressed by the last of the Covid-recovery funds made possible by the Biden administration’s lavishing of aid dollars on local governments. It is projected to fall back to $7.6 million by year’s end as the district contends with dropping enrollment and school vouchers’ siphoning of district dollars to subsidize private education.
Furry champions the syphoning.
“Parental rights and school choice are two big things right now that are what Florida’s modeling for the rest of the country,” Furry said. “And I think that we are a template. And I believe that I was on the front lines of implementing these policies right here at the local level. And I know I’m ready to bring them to Washington, DC as well.”
