Randy Fine vs. Josh Weil: Democrats hopeful, GOP frets in special election in Florida

ORLANDO, Fla. — A Central Florida congressional race that seemed like an easy win for the GOP a few months ago now has Republicans sweating as polls and early voting tallies show a closer-than-expected contest.

The special election Tuesday between Republican state Sen. Randy Fine, R-Melbourne, and Orlando teacher Josh Weil, a Democrat, is getting national attention from Democrats, who see an opportunity to leverage Fine’s incendiary reputation and the growing blowback against President Donald Trump in their party’s favor.

Weil has outraised Fine by more than 10-to-1 in the race to fill Mike Waltz’s former congressional seat, and the head of the national Democratic Party is jetting in to rally voters on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Gov. Ron DeSantis says Fine — a fellow Republican with whom he has clashed recently — will “underperform” in a seat Republicans won by 33 points in November.

“A win in this district for the Democrat would be as big a deal as when Doug Jones won the Senate seat in Alabama,” said Volusia Democratic chair Nick Sakhnovsky, referring to the huge Democratic upset in a special U.S. Senate race in 2017 that foreshadowed the 2018 blue wave in Congress. “It would definitely create a lot of reverberations.”

Democrats should not get their hopes up too much, said Matt Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst. Republicans are still the favorite to come out on top when their voters head to the polls on Election Day.

“The more attention it gets, the more likely turnout’s going to favor Republicans,” Isbell said. “Randy Fine’s a blowhard, but he generates attention. Which means it’s not a quiet race.”

But even a close loss could give the party headwinds going into future special elections and the 2026 midterms, said J. Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia.

On Tuesday, a Democrat won a special state Senate election in Pennsylvania that had a similar GOP partisan advantage to congressional District 6.

“When it comes to these special elections in these kinds of lopsided districts, a lot of times it’s about beating the spread,” Coleman said.

Republicans currently have a slim 5-vote margin the House and are eager to keep the Florida district for teh GOP. Thursday, Trump pulled the nomination of New York congresswoman Elise Stefanik to become the ambassador to the United Nations. It’s “essential that we maintain EVERY Republican Seat in Congress,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.

The special election in District 6, which stretches through Lake, Volusia, St Johns, Flagler, Putnam and Marion counties, was triggered when Waltz was tapped by Trump to serve as his national security advisor.

A second special election for Congress is taking place Tuesday in the Panhandle between Republican state CFO Jimmy Patronis and Democrat Gay Valimont. They are vying for the seat once held by U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Trump endorsed Fine, a controversial conservative firebrand who served eight years in the Florida House and was recently elected to the state Senate. He faces Weil, who works at Kissimmee Middle School.

Weil’s campaign raised an eye-popping $9.5 million as of the last Federal Election Commission filing deadline of March 12, most of it via smaller donations of less than $50 at fundraising events.

That haul helped the Weil campaign put on events such as a town hall in DeLand with rapper and activist Killer Mike, who said he “unequivocally” endorsed Weil.

Fine, meanwhile, raised less than $1 million as of the same period.

NBC News reported that Fine, a casino industry millionaire, has since given $600,000 to his campaign to help stem the tide. The Trump White House was also reportedly “concerned” and “hyper-focused” on Fine’s race, the TV station said.

The early voting and vote-by-mail returns may be contributing to GOP worries.

As of Friday, Democrats were ahead of Republicans in the vote-by-mail turnout by more than 3 percentage points. Early, in-person voting numbers trended Republican, but the overall GOP turnout lead was about 6 points as of Thursday.

That number jibes with a new St. Pete Polls survey released Wednesday that showed Fine leading by 4, within the 4.9-point margin of error.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report says Republicans have a 14-point advantage in the district.

Weil says he is confident he will win.

“Absolutely, we are pulling off a major upset victory here,” Weil said. “All of our data shows that we are strongly and commandingly in the lead, and I’m pretty confident that Randy Fine’s data shows that too.”

Fine did not respond to requests for an interview. His campaign website states he wants to lower insurance rates, secure the border, and “defend the right to life and the ability to defend it via the Second Amendment.”

Neither Weil nor Fine lives in the district, which is allowed by federal law. But Weil said he and his campaign staff have been based in Flagler County — which is in the district — since late December and have been holding forums and public events in all six counties that are part of District 6.

Weil said he would have voted with the rest of the Democrats in the House against the GOP spending bill to avert a shutdown. His major issues are expanding access to education and protecting Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare from Republicans and Elon Musk’s DOGE.

“These are not entitlements,” Weil said. “These are programs that people have been paying into their entire life. Now they’re having the rug pulled out after them.”

Fine has ramped up his attacks on Weil over the past few weeks. He slammed Weil for employing a “violent felon” after a campaign staffer was arrested for stealing a bicycle and also brought up an incident in 2015 in which Weil was suspended for three days for an altercation with a student at the Orange Youth Academy.

The student said Weil grabbed his neck and “forced him down to the ground,” according to a school report, while Weil said he was attempting to stop the student from repeatedly hitting him.

Fine also called his opponent “Jihad Josh Weil” for his past embrace of Islam after marrying his now ex-wife, a Muslim woman. Weil, who said he’s “wrestled with my faith over the course of my life,” called Fine’s attacks “disgusting.”

“He’s scared and he’s desperate, and he’s just throwing stuff out there and making baseless claims and accusations,” Weil said. “This is why dirty politics exist, right? If you can’t get the people to like you, then your only other option is to try to get them to dislike your opponent. And nobody likes Randy Fine.”

During his time in the House, Fine became as notorious for his social media provocations and bitter local rivalries as he has for the controversial bills he’s introduced.

Fine, who is Jewish, twice called a Jewish Facebook commenter a “Judenrat,” a term used to describe Nazi collaborators. He threatened in a text to pull funding for Special Olympics over a feud with a Brevard County school board member he called a “whore.”

In 2019, he floated the idea of a “potential shutdown” of the University of Central Florida. Last year, he was held in contempt last year after flipping off a judge.

While he was once at the forefront of promoting DeSantis’ anti-woke politics, including his war with Disney over the so-called “don’t say gay” bill, he’s since split with the governor and become one of his biggest GOP critics.

DeSantis said this week that any GOP underperformance in District 6 would be “a reflection of the candidate that’s running in that race.”

Coleman, the Virginia expert, said aping the president and courting controversy may not work in Fine’s favor.

“There are a lot of candidates who fashion themselves in the image of Trump, but it’s hard to replicate the original,” Coleman said. “Just because you run in a Trumpy way doesn’t mean you’re going to automatically get all of his enthusiasm.”

But Isbell said a Trump endorsement in a heavily red district at a time when local politics are increasingly nationalized may be all that Fine needs.

If he wins, Democrats — and Republicans — should prepare for drama, Isbell said. “Because I don’t think anyone’s really prepared for Randy Fine to be in Congress. It’s going to be a goddamn nightmare.”

Libertarian Andrew Parrott of Ocala and independent anti-abortion activist Randall Terry are also on the ballot.

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