Special House election in Florida — Republican Randy Fine and Democrat Josh Weil. Photo by Collage photo — Joe Raedle/Getty Images and screenshot

By Jacob Kornbluh March 27, 2025

In the first major test for the Republican Party just two months after Donald Trump took office, a race for a solidly red seat in central Florida suddenly threatens to shrink the GOP majority in the House and embolden Democrats, who are still reeling from a devastating loss in the presidential election. The contest features a Jewish Republican and a Muslim Democrat, both representing communities that the presidential nominees made efforts to win in key swing states in the November election.

The April 1 special election — to replace Mike Waltz, who became national security adviser — has become unexpectedly competitive in recent days, despite Trump winning the district by more than 30 points.

Josh Weil, a math teacher and progressive Democrat, outraised State Sen. Randy Fine by more than $9 million, and a new survey shows him trailing by only four points, within the margin of error.

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Fine, known for his combative nature, has the backing of President Donald Trump. However, some Republicans worry about a lack of enthusiasm for the GOP candidate and missteps that have energized the Democratic voter base ahead of the midterm elections next year. “It’s a reflection of the candidate running in that race,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Tuesday. Fine, who served as DeSantis’ Jewish outreach chair during the 2018 gubernatorial election, later turned on his ally and endorsed Trump early in the 2024 presidential primary.

“We have a candidate that I don’t think is winning,” Steve Bannon, a Trump ally who came under fire for making a Nazi-like salute at a recent conference, remarked on his radio program early this week. “That’s an issue.”

A Fine campaign spokesperson said Republicans are “united to defeat radical Democrats” and thanked DeSantis for “deploying his team … to help our campaign.”

Who is Randy Fine?

Fine, 50, raised in Lexington, Kentucky, is a Harvard graduate and a former gambling industry executive. He has represented the area east of Orlando in the state legislature — first in the Florida House of Representatives and then the state Senate — since 2016. He is the sole Jewish Republican in the 160-member Florida Legislature.

Fine told The Jewish Press, a conservative online publication, that after being harassed at school for his identity — some children called him a “Kentucky Fried Jew” — he promised himself he would never apologize for being Jewish. The father of two teenagers, Jacob and David, Fine said that when his kids were born he “made the decision that they were not going to go through what I did.”

As a politician, Fine embraced the nickname “Hebrew Hammer” given to him by a Republican colleague and became a leading sponsor of pro-Israel legislation and measures aimed at combating antisemitism. His legislative efforts include amending the state’s anti-BDS law to bar all municipalities and agencies from purchasing products from companies or organizations that boycott Israel; requiring schools and universities to treat antisemitism on par with racism; and codifying the use of the controversial International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which classifies most anti-Zionism as antisemitic. He also passed legislation to enhance security at Jewish day schools.

Establishing his political brand as a staunch defender of Israel, Fine has also used social media to target his critics aggressively. In 2019, he repeatedly referred to a Jewish commentator who promoted an event focused on Israeli-Palestinian peace as a “Judenrat,” a term historically used for Jews who collaborated with the Nazis.

Shortly after announcing his run for Congress, Fine tweeted the hashtag “#BombsAway” at Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, progressive Democrats and critics of Israel. Muslim-rights groups and the Anti-Defamation League condemned it as a threat, though Fine denied any intent to threaten.

On Wednesday, Fine, who was chairing a committee hearing at the time, told a speaker wearing a kaffiyeh to “enjoy your terrorist rag.”

Josh Weil’s embrace of Islam

Weil, 40, was raised by a single mother who was a “born-again Christian” but said he only found God “outside organized religion.” He later converted to Islam after marrying a Muslim woman from New York and moving to Florida. Weil said he “got a deep appreciation for the beauty of Islam and the message of the Quran” after visiting local mosques in the Central Florida area. He is now affiliated with the Islamic Center of Orlando.

He first ran for the U.S. Senate in 2021 to challenge former Sen. Marco Rubio but withdrew before the Democratic primary took place. He posted on X that he wants to make history as the first Muslim Senator and pledged “to make a huge scene when I am sworn in on the Quran.”

Fine called his Democratic opponent “Jihad Josh Weil” and suggested Weil “supported Muslim terror.” Earlier this month, Fine called for Weil’s arrest after a hired campaign staffer was arrested while handing out flyers on a stolen bicycle. Weil’s campaign fired the person, who had previously been convicted of gun crime charges.

Fine highlighted Weil’s stances on Israel, though the Democrat hasn’t spoken much in public about the war in Gaza. However, in his 2021 campaign, he condemned “Israel’s state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians,” urged then-Secretary of State Antony Blinken to immediately intervene to stop the expulsion of Palestinian residents from East Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and advocated to end U.S. military aid to Israel.

On a recent podcast interview, posted on Weil’s website, the hosts described Fine as a “hardcore Zionist” and an “unabashedly psycho pro-Israel” politician. “If you are to pull it off, I mean the greatest thing that would come from it is a direct shot across the bow against Zionism,” said Peter Hager, a co-host of the JENerational Change podcast. Weil nodded his head in agreement.

Fine’s fallout with DeSantis over antisemitism

Fine and DeSantis were allies from the time of Fine’s election to the legislature. He served as the Jewish outreach chairman for DeSantis’s 2018 gubernatorial campaign and accompanied him on a trade mission to Israel in 2019.

When DeSantis traveled to Israel in 2023, Fine tweeted that he had made “a secret trip” to Jerusalem as well — despite not being invited to join the delegation — to hand deliver a hate-crime bill that was waiting for the governor to sign; the bill made publicly displaying a swastika and other bigoted imagery a felony. DeSantis signed it into law during that trip.

Their relationship soured in 2023 when Fine accused DeSantis of failing to call out antisemitism and embracing antisemites to boost his political career. “I had been very unhappy with the quietness around the rise of Nazism,” Fine told The New Yorker. He also criticized DeSantis for stumping for Doug Mastriano, the GOP nominee for Pennsylvania governor who embraced Christian nationalists and invoked antisemitic stereotypes on the campaign trail. Last year, he blasted DeSantis for an official business trip he took to Ireland, calling it an “antisemitic country.”

When Fine endorsed Trump early on in the 2024 GOP primary, he suggested DeSantis, who was still a viable candidate, was deliberately stalling the building of a state Holocaust memorial. “Governor DeSantis has taken longer to commemorate the deaths of 6 million Jews than it took the Allies to stop the deaths of 6 million more,” he wrote. DeSantis defended his record on antisemitism and called the attacks “ridiculous.”

Jewish support for Fine 

The Jewish population in the northeast Florida district is relatively small, compared to the area’s larger number of conservative Christians.

The Republican Jewish Coalition, which hosted a fundraising event for Fine after he announced his bid in November, said it is confident Fine will prevail. If elected, Fine would increase Jewish Republican representation in Congress to levels not seen since the 1980s. There are currently three Jewish Republicans in the House: Reps. Max Miller of Ohio, David Kustoff of Tennessee, and Craig Goldman of Texas.

“Randy Fine will be the next Congressman for Florida’s 6th Congressional District, and we look forward to working closely with him after his victory on April 1,” said Sam Markstein, RJC’s spokesperson.

Fine was also endorsed by AIPAC, and the group’s PAC raised more than $50,000 for his campaign.

The Jewish Democratic Council of America, which has not invested in the Democratic campaign due to the small Jewish electorate, said it hopes Fine loses because of his alliance with Trump. Halie Soifer, JDCA’s chief executive, pointed to the Democrats flipping a Republican seat in a special election for Pennsylvania’s legislature on Tuesday as a sign of shifting political dynamics. “Fine has echoed Trump’s bigoted and incendiary rhetoric and supported his extreme policies,” Soifer said. “Alignment with Trump comes at a cost for Republicans.”

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