A Tallahassee judge has rejected the attempt of one GOP gubernatorial candidate to knock another out of the race.<\/p>\n
James Fishback will remain in the primary, beating a challenge from Lt. Gov. Jay Collins.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis attempt to remove us from the ballot has been rejected by a Tallahassee judge,\u201d Fishback said in a video<\/a> he posted on social media Monday evening, soon after the ruling. \u201cI will remain on your ballot, and in 22 days we will pull off the biggest upset in American politics.\u201d<\/p>\n There\u2019s a seven-year residency requirement to be governor. Collins said Fishback violated that, pointing to how he registered to vote and voted in Washington, D.C.; filed D.C. resident tax returns; and certified a condo there as his primary residence on mortgage paperwork.<\/p>\n In a hearing last week, Fishback testified that his tax preparer handled his returns. Fishback said he \u201cinadvertently\u201d registered in D.C. after walking into a polling place to vote for Trump in 2020 and signed mortgage papers there in a rush and didn\u2019t mean to list that home as his primary residence.<\/p>\n ALSO READ: Fishback-Collins hearing details <\/a><\/p>\n \u201cIt may be true that the various election and financial filings and transactions about which the plaintiff complains could result in regulatory, maybe even more severe legal, repercussions for the defendant under Washington, D.C. law,\u201d wrote Judge David Frank.<\/p>\n \u201cThe defendant himself acknowledged this,\u201d he continued. \u201cThey do not, however, defeat the presumption of continued residency under Florida law.\u201d<\/p>\n He wrote that Fishback \u201cnever had an actual subjective intent to move his permanent residency, his domicile, from Florida to Washington, D.C.\u201d<\/p>\n Fishback said he bought the home to visit his parents, referring to it as an \u201cinvestment property.\u201d And he said he got \u201cstuck\u201d in D.C. in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n