There are 10 Republicans campaigning in the special election primary for the seat Matt Gaetz announced he isn’t going to occupy in Congress next year. The filing date was December 6 and the primary is January 28— with a general election of April Fool’s Day. It’s an R+19 district, but there is one Democrat running, Gay Valimont. Trump has already endorsed one of the Republicans, Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis, so he’s probably got the job. However, the Republican who opposed Gaetz in this year’s primary, Aaron Dimmock, ids running again. He got 26,788 votes last time (27.4%). In a low turnout 10-person election, if he could get them all to vote again, he could win. Valimont, the Democrat, also ran against Gaetz last month. She took 34% of the vote and I’m guessing that it wouldn’t matter if she was running against Patronis or Dimmock, this isn’t a district that would elect a Democrat, not even if the Republicans go through with their threats to cut Social Security and Medicare.
All that said, you may be wondering why Gaetz, who was trying to get picked for John Morgan's Lt Governor ticket, sent up this extremely weird trial balloon yesterday:
My guess is the no one plans to swear in two Members from Florida’s first district and that the person who will be sworn in will be Jimmy Patronis, not Matt Gaetz. The reason he’s threatening to expose his former colleagues is because it just leaked out that the House Ethics Committee met in secret last month and voted to release their nearly 3 years-in-the-making, damning investigative report on Gaetz. At least one Republican would have had to vote with the Democrats to release it. As it turns out, two Republicans voted with the Democrats to release the career-ending report. Presumably it will be released tomorrow or over the weekend. These are the 118th Congress' 10 House Ethics Committee members:
If the report is thorough, it will show that Gaetz engaged in sexual misconduct with at least one minor, used illegal drugs at parties, shared pornographic imagines and videos of himself on the House floor, misused state identification records, converted campaign funds to personal use and accepted gifts that violated House rules.
Lying on Twitter he claims he was “fully exonerated” by the Biden/Garland DOJ. He wasn’t exonerated at all. The Justice Department, worried that some of the witnesses might look bad on the stand during cross examination decided not to charge him. (“You claim to have seen Matt Gaetz having sex with an underage girl who he paid. How many underage girls have you paid to have sex with, sir?) That’s very different from being exonerated.
Former Congressman Gaetz yesterday on Twitter:
Poor MAGA Mike (R-LA), widely considered the weakest speaker in modern times, asked the Ethics Committee to not release the report. They responded the same way his conference responded to his doomed government funding bill today after co-president Musk vetoed it. Of course Georgia's QAnon crackpot Marjorie Traitor Greene also took to Twitter to try to get some of the spotlight on herself:
What gaetz knows is that if you or I screw a minor, it's rape. If he does it, it's legal. cuz nobody will do shit about it.
trump committed treason, incited insurrection, enriched himself off of his gig as prez, had kids kidnapped and murdered at the border, caused maybe a half million dead from covid, raped, stole, defrauded, committed perjury... and he's just been elected fuhrer.
All because the other side are just a bunch of corrupt pussies who never do shit about anything... if you're rich or in government.
But you all elected them... for many decades now... so you must be pleased as punch.