Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL) won the Republican primary Tuesday night in his bid for reelection in his Florida congressional district.
The four-term establishment congressman fought off a challenge from Mara Macie, who ran a spirited grassroots campaign with the message that her opponent was not “Rutherford in particular – it is the establishment uniparty machine.”
With over 95 percent of votes in, the well-financed Rutherford secured two thirds of the vote.
While falling short, Macie secured a higher percentage of the vote than the challenger across the state in Florida’s other closely watched primary. Aaron Dimmock and super PAC’s supporting him spent millions in his primary challenge to Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), yet Dimmock received just over a quarter of votes case in Florida’s First Congressional District.
Rutherford’s race was not without controversy.
As Breitbart News reported:
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.
Those flyers claimed Rutherford has earned the endorsement of the Republican group, despite the group giving Macie their endorsement.
Rutherford was first put on Macie’s radar when her husband was fighting with the Department of Defense over the military vaccine mandate. She told Breitbart News Rutherford’s office entirely neglected the concerns of two families who had reached out to him about “the illegality” of the mandate, while telling two others, ‘‘’Sorry, there’s nothing we can do.’”
A former sheriff, Rutherford was one of 25 intransigent Republicans who blocked Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) from the speakership in a series of votes on the House floor despite Jordan having won the House Republican Conference’s nomination in a conference-wide vote.
Rutherford and his cohorts’ blockage of Jordan — perhaps the most popular conservative in the nation — led to a compromise giving the speaker’s gavel to Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA). Johnson’s later partnership with Democrats — including on a vote which saved his gavel — unleashed an extension of funding levels and priorities engineered by then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Democrat Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), passage of a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act extension that allowed intelligence agencies to continue spying on Americans without obtaining a warrant, and tens of millions in foreign aid to Ukraine.
Rutherford cast the deciding vote to kill the amendment to end warrantless surveillance of Americans.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.