Congressional candidate Mara Macie pledged to represent her home swamps of Florida, not the crooked Washington, DC, swamp, like her primary opponent in Florida’s Fifth District, establishment Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL), does.
Mara Macie joined host Matt Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday as early voting began for the August 20 primary.
Macie discussed the energy behind her insurgent campaign, with Boyle agreeing that there are “a lot of signs out there that John Rutherford and the Republican establishment Northeast Florida are terrified. They’re freaking out.”
Republican voters in St. Johns County – one of the two counties in the district – began receiving guides in the mail Friday that were “fraudulently claiming to be the St. Johns County GOP and putting endorsed candidates that are not endorsed by that organization on this fake endorsement list,” Macie said.
Local news outlets reported on the fraud.
“They literally took the real endorsement list, and they copied the look of it, and they put their candidates, the establishment candidates, in that publication,” she elaborated, pointing out that the guide instructs voters to take it with them to the polls to select the candidates fraudulently listed as the group’s favorites.
“We are seeing that level of desperation coming out of the establishment,” Macie said.
District residents are fired up to cast their ballot and to make a change, she told Boyle.
“We’ve been seeing early voting go on since Wednesday in Duval County, and those people, if you look at the numbers — the breakdown of the amount of people that have actually come out to early voting — Republicans are beating Democrats,” Macie said, explaining that the number of early voters suggests high energy since Republicans tend to wait until Election Day to cast ballots.
Macie, who called into the show from nearby a St. Johns County voting location, told Boyle, “A lot of people are giving me the thumbs up and basically saying that they’re supporting me over John. Here in St. Johns, we just got started today, but, I will tell you, I’ve had people. I’ve only been at this precinct for probably 20 minutes, 30 minutes, and I got the same thing.”
The high energy level, indicated by early voter turnout, suggests the challenger to the incumbent may have the advantage.
“It’s traditionally low voter turnout for primaries,” Macie said. “So, we’re gonna hope to see a better turnout than we’ve seen in the past because I think people should be motivated to get true representation at all levels of government.”
Macie laid out local complaints about Rutherford’s level of representation and service to his constituents.
“The number one complaint I get from constituents is that they call his office with an issue and either they don’t get anything back or they get a canned response back,” Macie explained. “But even if it’s a canned response, it’s generally a response selling them the reason why he doesn’t support what they support.”
Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL) (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Macie thinks it unacceptable that a representative should vote so differently than his constituents desire.
“These are the people that put him into office,” she said. “I can’t tell you how many people have told me, ‘I have voted for him historically, even back when he was the sheriff, and I’m done. I’m not voting for him anymore.’”
Macie told Boyle about conversations she has had with people who voted for Rutherford in the past throughout his long career in public office, claiming many former Rutherford loyalists ” are done, sick, and tired.”
“The people who are his loyalists don’t even have anything good to offer about why he is a good representative because they know he is not, so, he basically votes against everything that we represent or we want to have represented up in DC,” she continued.
Macie laid out the votes Rutherford has taken that are out of step with the people of Florida’s Fifth Congressional District.
“He voted for warrantless spying,” she said, referring to Rutherford’s deciding vote to kill an amendment prohibiting intelligence agencies to spy on Americans without a warrant. “He votes for every continuing resolution. He votes for all the money to Ukraine. I mean, that’s funding endless wars, and he’s making money off of it, which is a problem for me. I don’t believe that people in Congress should be making money off of anything if they have inside information,” which she promised not to trade if she is elected.
Macie further elaborated on why voters are frustrated with Rutherford’s brand of representation and the growing, palpable anger that has powered her surging campaign.
“People that are friends with John have decided to come and give me a chance over [him] because I stand with them,” she insisted. “I am on the same side as them when we’re all asking him to vote a certain way, and he won’t do it, so, historically, that voting record that he has up in DC really is the reason that people are turning on him.”
Boyle gave a deep dive into an issue Macie mentioned about Rutherford making money in office:
This has been a huge focus over the course of this guy’s congressional career. But John Rutherford was under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for failure to properly report various stock trades, including, apparently, [a] huge purchase of Raytheon the day that Russia invaded Ukraine — and then he proceeded to vote for every weapons package, which one would think that Raytheon is making money off of those from the taxpayers, right, because Raytheon’s a weapons developer, right?
…What I have is an issue with a member of Congress buying stock in the company and then proceeding to vote for legislation repeatedly that benefits that company, that way they’re financially improving their own position off of it.
This guy was under investigation for months and months and months by the by the House Ethics Committee. Now, he sits on the House Ethics Committee. I have never once heard him explain that he recused himself from the vote that eventually they dismissed the investigation into him.
But this only happened after Congresswoman Jackie Walorski — this was when Democrats were the majority in the House of Representatives — but the breakdown of the way that the House Ethics Committee works is there’s an even number of Republicans and Democrats on the committee … But [Walorski] died in a car accident. She was the ranking member of the committee back in August 2022. And then, two weeks later, when the Democrats were then firmly controlling the committee, they vote to — in the middle of August, so nobody’s paying attention to Congress — vote to just wipe away this this thing on him and dismiss it.
I haven’t heard if he voted for it or not or whatever. I, frankly, I find it all very troubling, and I have a million questions about it. And I’ll tell you right now, I’ve asked Rutherford, I’ve asked people close to him, if he will come on this program and explain it and answer questions about it, or if he’ll sit for an interview and answer questions about it. He won’t do it.
Boyle asked what questions Macie would have for Rutherford if he suddenly got the urge to begin answering questions.
“I would ask him why he doesn’t vote the way his constituents ask him to vote” she replied. “The word ‘representative’ is pretty clear. He is supposed to represent what his constituents want out of him, and he’s not doing it. So, I would ask him why he does that.”
She continued, “I would ask him why he keeps voting for the continuing resolutions, which have ridiculous things put into them — such as travel for DOD abortions and DEI, things like that are shoved into these packages. I would ask him why we keep sending money to Ukraine when we don’t even have our own border closed. And I’ve been to Darien, Panama; I have seen who’s coming up, and I will tell you right now we are in trouble. So, if we can’t handle our own borders, why are we defending someone else’s borders?”
Boyle, who made clear he will vote for Macie, asked what steps she is taking to secure victory on August 20.
“We are still knocking doors,” she replied enthusiastically. “We’re at precincts; we’re bouncing everywhere. It is going to be go go go from here on out. So, anybody who wants to see him removed or see several of the seats in there on their own ballot removed and replaced with people who are true America First and want tax dollars to go and be spent wisely, they can volunteer.”
Macie encouraged voters or donors interested in learning more about her or interested in volunteering or helping out to contact her on X or Facebook.
“Please reach out,” Macie told Boyle. “We want to hear from people. We want to know why things might not be represented the way you want them to be so we can address them with our campaigns and make sure that that representation is carried into DC.”
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. Eastern.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.