{"id":187114,"date":"2026-03-11T11:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/187114\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T11:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T11:47:08","slug":"james-fishback-has-seized-the-gen-z-right-now-he-thinks-he-can-win-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/187114\/","title":{"rendered":"James Fishback Has Seized the Gen Z Right. Now He Thinks He Can Win Florida."},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cWe\u2019ve broken into the mainstream,\u201d Fishback said in a recent interview, citing \u201cpeople who have told me, who are in their late 20s, early 30s, that I\u2019m going to be the first person they ever vote for.\u201d<\/p>\n

Peter Schorsch, the publisher of local outlet Florida Politics, sees Fishback in a state tradition. \u201cIf you keep making a copy of a copy on a copy machine, eventually it becomes so blurred, you don\u2019t even know what the original looked like,\u201d he tells me. \u201cAnd what Fishback is is the copy of the copy of the copy of the copy of Florida Man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Schorsch thinks that Fishback has succeeded, at least, in sucking up the oxygen in the campaign, if only in the manner of a car wreck. He attributes the candidate\u2019s relative stature in part to the makeup of the Florida Republican primary electorate\u2014\u201cthere is just a block of it, I\u2019d say 20%, that is inherently racist\u201d\u2014but acknowledges that Fishback had demonstrated at least one real strength.<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

A former high school debater among a University of Tampa crowd.<\/p>\n

Photographer Zack Wittman<\/p>\n

\u201cHe sees where the puck is going,\u201d Schorsch says.<\/p>\n

Fishback tells Vanity Fair that his plan is to increase under-35 turnout by five times in the Republican primary, \u201cbecause the denominator is so freaking low to begin with.\u201d He is running on a platform of affordability and hardline immigration restriction, appealing to a broad sense of decline and degradation among young men in particular. He credits his breakthrough to meeting people where they were. Fuentes has offered<\/a> Fishback\u2019s more positive poll results as proof of the strength of his own following, the Groypers, while declining<\/a> to endorse him in an effort to stanch the candidate\u2019s toxicity. While Fishback rejects the label he\u2019s received<\/a> as the first Groyper<\/a> candidate, he could see the advantages of the association. \u201cA lot of the people who watch Nick Fuentes,\u201d Fishback says, \u201cthat may be the only political personality they follow.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even by the rowdy standards of Florida politics, Fishback entered the race with an uncommon amount of baggage. After he dropped out of Georgetown University, he took a short-lived detour to Wall Street, which culminated in a dispute with his hedge fund employer. He ultimately admitted to sharing confidential information and was left with a $229,000-and-counting legal bill<\/a>, and the repossession of his Tesla<\/a>. A Florida school district cut ties with him after a woman who had been a student in a high-school debate program he was running accused him of initiating a romantic relationship with her when she was 17 and he was 27. (The woman filed for an order of protection last year and was denied<\/a>. Fishback has denied any wrongdoing<\/a>, saying, \u201cI have never been arrested, charged, or convicted of any crime.\u201d)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWe\u2019ve broken into the mainstream,\u201d Fishback said in a recent interview, citing \u201cpeople who have told me, who…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187115,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[409,28,30,3475,29,53561,19241,99,34527,4219,412],"class_list":{"0":"post-187114","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-donald-trump","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-man","12":"tag-florida-news","13":"tag-joe-rogan","14":"tag-media","15":"tag-politics","16":"tag-republican-party","17":"tag-republicans","18":"tag-ron-desantis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187114\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}