Ten Republicans, Two Pardons, One Safe Seat: Florida's 19th District Primary Explained

Florida voters went to the polls today, Tuesday, August 18, to pick a Republican nominee for the state's 19th Congressional District, a seat so safely red it favored Donald Trump by 30 points in 2024, according to news.bgov. The primary field was crowded and contentious.

Ten Republicans ran for the seat being vacated by Rep. Byron Donalds, who's running for governor instead. Six of the ten have run for House seats in other states, according to news.bgov. Two have prison records and presidential pardons. One is a former congressman who accused his own colleagues of inviting him to cocaine-fueled orgies in Washington.

The pardoned felons

John Strand, a former model and actor who grew up in Beverly Hills, was convicted on one felony obstruction charge and four misdemeanors for storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, according to The Daily Beast. He served roughly a year in federal prison before the Supreme Court narrowed the obstruction statute prosecutors used against him, leading to his release. Trump later pardoned him along with roughly 1,500 other January 6 defendants. Strand's endorsers include MyPillow's Mike Lindell, Rep. Lauren Boebert and retired Gen. Michael Flynn.

Chris Collins, who represented New York's 27th District until 2019, is also in the race. Collins and his son were arrested in August 2018 on insider trading and false-statement charges, according to The Daily Beast. He won reelection anyway that fall, then resigned and pleaded guilty months later. He began serving a 26-month sentence in October 2022 and received a pardon from Trump that December, according to The Daily Beast. Collins was the first sitting House member to endorse Trump in 2016 and later moved to Florida permanently. He declined to comment for a story by tspr.

The comeback bids

Madison Cawthorn, elected to represent North Carolina's 11th District in 2020 at age 25, is also running. His single term was marked by controversy, including a March 2022 podcast claim that fellow Republicans had invited him to orgies and cocaine use in Washington, which he called "a sexual perversion that goes on in Washington," according to The Daily Beast. He was later dogged by an insider-trading allegation tied to undisclosed trades and lost his primary that year.

Jim Oberweis, a wealthy businessman, is on his seventh run for federal office, having previously sought Senate and House seats in Illinois going back to 2002, according to news.bgov. Catalina Lauf, a former Trump Commerce Department adviser, ran for the same Illinois district as Oberweis before relocating to Florida. According to The Daily Beast, Trump made a late-game endorsement of Lauf just days before the primary, after early voting was already underway, citing her Commerce Department service; he had stayed out of the race for most of its run, per news.bgov.

The carpetbagger fight

The primary centered on residency rather than ideology. All ten candidates ran as Trump loyalists with little daylight between them on policy, according to news.bgov political scientist Kyle Kondik of Sabato's Crystal Ball. Instead, candidates attacked each other over where they actually lived.

Jim Schwartzel, a local radio station owner and one of the few longtime Florida residents in the race, ran ads branding rivals "failed politicians from Chicago and New York" who "couldn't get elected in their own state, so they moved here," according to tspr. Oberweis countered that he's owned a Florida home longer than any of his opponents.

Strand pushed back too, calling it "rich and hypocritical" for recent transplants to call others carpetbaggers, according to tspr.