U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, the unfiltered provocateur and former member of the Florida Senate who won a special election in April to claim the Flagler County-centered congressional seat vacated by Mike Waltz, has chosen the like-minded former member of the Palm Coast City Council to be his regional director in Flagler, Volusia and St Johns County: Ed Danko.
Danko begins his job on the federal payroll Friday. The one-term council member made an unsuccessful run for a County Commission seat, losing to Pam Richardson by 39 votes and vowing never to run for office again. But he didn’t vow never to be in politics again.
Ernest Audino, a retired Army brigadier general, held the regional or district director position when Waltz was the congressman, and Randy Stapleford filled the role for Ron DeSantis before that. Audino briefly entered the race in the special election, withdrawing after Donald Trump endorsed Find. Audino has since become a business recruiter in Volusia County. Stapleford is Flagler County’s representative on the Florida Inland Navigation District.
The district director is essentially the congressman’s local ambassador, running a local office, conveying the congressman’s messages locally and taking care of constituent services, the most essential part of the job. Fine decided to split the responsibility between two directors, with another handling the Lake, Putnam and Marion county portions of the district.
Danko–who declined to be interviewed–had just earned his Realtor license. He’s not been silent on local politics, maintaining an active and vocal opposition to Palm Coast Mayor Mike Norris, filing an ethics complaint against the mayor and taking to social media and other comment boards to voice his characteristically caustic opinions. He was actively involved in Fine’s election campaign, organizing an appearance by Fine at Danko’s Trump Club, where the two hit it off.
If anyone was hoping to see and hear less of Danko–a polarizing, often controversial figure whom the Palm Coast City Council censured in his last days on the job–the reverse will likely be truer: as Fine’s district director, Danko will be visible at local government meetings, civic functions and public events.
Fine had little knowledge of Flagler County other than slicing through it on I-95 over the years. In a radio appearance on WNZF’s Free For All Friday last December, host David Ayres tol him of local concerns that Fine would be an absentee representative. “People here want to hear from you that you will come up here to Flagler, St John’s,” Ayres said. “They do want to hear that you’re going to be here, and not long arm, you know, from Melbourne and Washington. They want to feel some love from Randy Fine.” (It isn’t often that the words “love” and “Randy Fine” are heard in the same breath, at least not without irony.)
“They’re going to get that,” Fine assured him. When Ayres asked him if he was going to have an office in Flagler County, Fine was non-committal. “I haven’t figured that out,” he said. “There are three offices right now that Congressman Waltz has. I’ll probably start by looking at those and determining, if it ain’t broke, why break it. And then we’ll take it from there. I’m not going to figure out those things until after the election.”
It appears he now has, with the opening of a Flagler County office–but not where Waltz had his office. Fine’s staffers are looking for a different location. “It’s a big district, whether it’s going to be Volusia, Flagler, St Johns, Lake, Putnam or Marion, I would expect you’ll see me in one of those in the not-too-distant future,” Fine said.
Danko has been a homeowner in Palm Coast’s W Section since 2018. In him, Fine may have a mirror-image of the congressman’s abrasive nature, but unlike Fine, Danko is closely aware of the local political landscape across jurisdictions, familiar with most local officials, comfortable on radio or before cameras–he was a network television news producer in his former career–and a compulsive door-knocker who thrives on contact with constituents. In 2020 he out-campaigned most and better-known candidates to win his council seat. On the council, and controversies aside–he could easily be distracted by conflicts with fellow-council members–he was often a loud and persistent advocate for constituents.
Waltz resigned the District 6 seat to be Trump’s national security adviser. It was a short tenure. Waltz became the first member of the new administration to resign after he invited an Atlantic editor and reporter to what was supposed to be a secure group chat involving top administration officials, including the vice president and the defense secretary, and through which the defense secretary revealed imminent military attacks in Yemen. The president shifted Waltz to United Nations ambassador, a position that requires Senate confirmation. That hearing is not expected to be easy for Waltz, nor its outcome predictable.
Fine meanwhile has been making more news in Florida from the failure of the bills he left behind at the Legislature than from any actions in Washington (lawmakers let drop his attempt to ban Pride flags on public grounds or to reinstitute the right of 18-to-21 year olds to buy long guns), or from incendiary, often bigoted rhetoric: last month he falsely, slanderously called U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan Democrat, “a bad person” who is “not a terrorist sympathizer, she’s a terrorist.” He said she should not be an American or in Congress. He has openly advocated the starving of Palestinians in Gaza, where a total, two-month-old Israeli siege is preventing food, medicine and any other humanitarian aid from entering.
Weeks before in the Florida Legislature, he referred to an individual addressing a committee while wearing a common, traditional Middle Eastern scarf typically associated with Levantines and Bedouins from North Africa to coastal Syria as wearing a “terrorist rag.” Fine inaccurately called it the “symbol of Hamas” and of Hezbollah, the militant groups in Gaza and Lebanon. (The scarf, referred to as kefiyyeh, a term with Italian and English origins, is especially favored by Palestinians but also worn by Christian mountaineers in Lebanon and Syria.) During his campaign against Josh Weil, the Democrat, Fine called him “Jihad Josh.” His legislative colleagues either in Washington or in Tallahassee have not censured him.
“Randy Fine’s long and documented history of promoting bigotry and political violence is a danger to his colleagues, to American Muslims and Palestinians, and to the foundational principles of our democracy,” Robert S. McCaw, CAIR’s Government Affairs Department Director, said today as his organization sent a message to 1,600 congressional staffers alerting them to the dehumanizing rhetoric and asking for a public condemnation of such remarks. None is likely forthcoming.
