In one of the dreariest elections in recent memory, Randy Fine, the Brevard County state Senator, today won the Republican primary in the race to fill the congressional seat vacated by Mike Waltz, whom President Trump named his national security adviser. Josh Weil won the Democratic primary. Fine and Weill will face off in the general election on April 1.
It was not a contest.
In Flagler County, Fine took nearly 85 percent of the vote, with Aaron Baker getting around 12 percent and Ehsan Joarder less than 4 percent. Fine was winning in Volusia County with 80 percent, 76 percent in St. Johns (where fewer than 1,200 people voted) and 85 percent in Putnam counties. Marion County, slivers of which are included in the 6th Congressional District, had not reported any results as of 7:30 p.m., but those results were mathematically irrelevant to the outcome.
Fine’s exhortation on Facebook this morning as polls opened–“Every vote is vital and every vote counts”–seemed to reflect his literary mastery of hyperbole.
Same story for Weill, a 40-year-old math teacher in Kissimmee who took 68 percent of the vote in Flagler County against Geoerge Selmont, 61 in Volusia, 55 in St. Johns and 58 in Putnam County.
Turnout was dismal. With all early voting, mail ballots and all but two of Flagler County’s 21 precincts reporting, the election drew about 8,500 Republican and 3,725 Democratic votes in a county with some 99,000 registered voters, a turnout around the 14 percent mark.
Fine, like the other candidates in the race, had no connection to Flagler County and–with one exception–none to the 6th Congressional District. But he banked on a brash, boorish and confrontational style, and more particularly, on Donald Trump’s endorsement, along with a seemingly superfluous–because unopposed–avalanche of advertising to win the primary. If he campaigned anywhere in Flagler County, he did not make it anymore widely known than his knowledge of the county he aims to represent the most sharply divided Congress in a century.
With thanks to The Anchor in Flagler Beach, whose martini, mussels, french fries and WiFi made this story possible.
