Palm Coast City Council member Charles Gambaro late Thursday announced he will challenge U.S. Rep. Randy Fine in the 2026 primary for the 6th Congressional District seat Fine won in a special election last April.
Gambaro cited Fine’s absence from the district, his reversal on pledges to tour Palm Coast’s troubled wastewater infrastructure and to open an office locally, his continuously “outrageous” comments regarding the Gaza war (as long as Israeli hostages aren’t returned, “starve away,” Fine said of a Gaza population of 2 million in famine) and his poor constituent services among the reasons that spurred him to join the race.
“I don’t need this, but I feel obligated to step in,” Gambaro said in an interview this morning.
“Our current representative is not present. He doesn’t live in our district and doesn’t care to be part of our community,” Gambaro, a local resident for over two decades, said. “That, coupled with outrageous comments and behavior from a sitting member of Congress regarding very critical foreign policy issues is just something that cannot be tolerated.” Fine’s office did not respond when asked by email about Gambaro’s comments.
The resign-to-run law does not apply to federal offices, and would not apply anyway since the next House term does not begin before January 2026, two months after the end of Gambaro’s term on the council. He intends to serve out that term. He was appointed to the council last fall, an appointment Mayor Mike Norris challenged in court in a losing bid to unseat him.
After the council censured Norris for the second time last month, Gambaro won his colleague’s support to ask the governor to suspend or remove the mayor from office. That request is pending, and unlikely to result in the mayor’s removal.
With Council member Dave Sullivan’s plan not to run in the 2026 election, Gambaro’s decision creates the second open seat on the council–an opening that gives the embattled Norris a chance to make a play for a majority aligned with him. The seat Theresa Pontieri holds is also up. Pontieri has not said whether she will run. “I plan to remain in local politics,” she said today, which hints at a run for another office such as the County Commission, in which case there would be an unprecedented three open seats in the same election. The risk of ending up in the minority won;t be encouraging her to stay
“I’m confident that a member of our community will come forward to continue the good work that our council’s pursued,” Gambaro said. “We’ve got great members on our advisory boards, and I will do everything I can to assist, to encourage members of our community to run for city council. It’s important.”
Gambaro would be the fourth Republican to announce a run against Fine, joining Aaron Baker of Sorrento, Alexandra van Cleef of Palm Coast and Joshua Vasquez of Ocala in the Republican primary. Democrat Ronnie “Ron” Murchinson-Rivera of Sorento is running, as is independent Purvi Dilip Bangdiwala of Ormond Beach.
A brigadier general in the U.S. Army Reserve, Gambaro was a senior advisor to the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, a special assistant to the assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Director for Gulf Affairs and the Middle East Strategic Alliance at various points during the first Trump administration, advising the national security adviser on policy matters. The alliance was a precursor to the Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and four Arab countries, including the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
Fine, known for verbal brutality and discriminatory initiatives when he was in the Florida legislature–among them the “don’t say gay” bill and a proposed ban on flying pride flags in public places–has shifted, since his campaign and election to Congress. He’d called his Democratic opponent, Josh Weil, “Jihad Josh,” and his rhetoric now echoes that of the most racist advocates in the Israeli government of what has been a genocidal war against Gaza’s Palestinians (among them Bezalel Smotrich, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Yoav Gallant).
The Council on American-Islamic Relations and several Democratic members of Congress condemned him early in his tenure, but now so have far-righ Republicans such as Marjorie Taylor Greene. The American Jewish Committee, the advocacy organization, denounced his comments about Gaza as “unacceptable.” The Brevard County Republican Executive Committee voted overwhelmingly to unseat Fine as a committeeman. Even the the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the far-right pro-Israel lobbying organization, appears to have distanced itself from Fine. AIPAC denies doing so. But as The New Republic noted this week, Fine’s name was removed from AIPAC’s database of pro-Israel politicians it supports. (A pdf of the page screenshot today is here.)
“There have been other members of Congress that have spoken out against his outrageous comments, and AIPAC, one of the largest political action committees in Washington, has removed their endorsement of Fine, which is stunning,” Gambaro said. “So it’s troubling that a member of Congress would behave in this way and have a complete lack of regard for truly representing the residents of the 6th Congressional District.” He intends to pursue AIPAC’s endorsement, if not the president’s–his former boss.
Gambaro, unprompted in the interview, cited John Mica, the former Congressman whose district once included Flagler County, as a model of congressional representation. Mica, an arch-conservative, was known for such stellar constituent services that on that count alone he repeatedly won the News-Journal’s endorsements in the 2000s, when it was a family-owned newspaper.
Mica had been Gmabaro’s representative when he was growing up in Oviedo and began his career. “He absolutely was a master of constituent services,” Gambaro said. “Anytime I had an issue as a resident, his chief of staff, Rusty, and the team were on it. Any time I decided to go to Washington, he would personally tour me through the U.S. House of Representatives, sit in the gallery, show me his voting card. That’s the example that I hope to fulfill as a member of Congress.”
Gambaro’s very first bill, he said, will be to seek funding for beach renourishment, followed by requests for infrastructure and roads, with a focus on local needs, as well what he calls “healthcare infrastructure.”
As for the race’s heavy fundraising lift ahead, “we’re poised very well. I feel very confident that we’re going to have a good first quarter and that’s part of the reason of making a jump into the race now,” he said, “because it does require significant fundraising in order to get your message out and be successful in winning both the primary and the general election. So we feel very confident that we’ll raise the money to be successful.”
He plans a formal campaign kickoff in Palm Coast in coming weeks.
