hearing last week<\/a>, Fishback said he had signed the forms without reading through them and realizing the implications.<\/p>\n“I was just kind of signing through stuff,” Fishback testified.<\/p>\n
He said the Washington apartment was rarely used, and said he only voted in the city because he was stuck there during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, he pointed to the time and effort he put into his Florida-based organization Incubate Debate as proof of his residency.<\/p>\n
In his order, Frank said that Florida courts, when in doubt about whether a political candidate is qualified or not, should rule in favor of the candidate.<\/p>\n
Courts should be cautious when removing the right of voters to choose a candidate, Frank said.<\/p>\n
He said Collins did not do enough to prove that Fishback’s residency had changed.<\/p>\n
Fishback said he intended to maintain his Florida residency, and Florida law puts a lot of weight on a person’s intent, Frank wrote.<\/p>\n
“(Fishback) took the witness stand, was sworn in, and testified under oath that it was always his intention to keep Florida residency, and that he never intended to abandon it,” Frank wrote in his ruling.<\/p>\n
While Fishback can remain on the ballot, both he and Collins’ odds of securing their spot on the Republican Party ticket are slim. Both men are polling below front-runner U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, who has been endorsed by President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
In a statement, Fishback called the decision a “victory for the Constitution and for every Floridian who believes elections should be decided by voters, not politicians trying to rig the system.”<\/p>\n
The primary is Aug. 18.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE \u2014 James Fishback, a Republican candidate for Florida governor, will stay on the ballot despite questions about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354384,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[144762,28,3291,30,29,28912,5187,23855,2103],"class_list":["post-354383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-david-frank","tag-florida","tag-florida-governor","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-james-fishback","tag-jay-collins","tag-republican-candidate","tag-university-of-central-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354383","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=354383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354383\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}