A Florida Republican who made a proposed 50% "Sin Tax" on OnlyFans earnings a centerpiece of his gubernatorial campaign finished with just 10.5% of the vote, and the creator he singled out by name is making sure everyone knows it.
James Fishback, a 31-year-old former investor, lost the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday after staking part of his platform on taxing adult content creators at half their income. Rep. Byron Donalds, endorsed by President Trump, won the nomination with 47.8% of the vote, easily defeating ten other candidates in a crowded field. Lt. Gov. Jay Collins came in second at 25.2%, and former state House Speaker Paul Renner finished fourth with 8.5%.
Fishback's signature proposal would have imposed a 50% state tax on earnings by OnlyFans creators, and, as he described it, on buyers of their content as well. He framed the levy as a tool to "disincentivize and deter" the adult content industry. But Florida primary voters showed little appetite for the idea, and the candidate who championed it was never competitive.
Sophie Rain, a 23-year-old Tampa-based OnlyFans creator who says she has earned more than $100 million on the platform since 2023, had been Fishback's most visible target. In January, he posted on X that Rain alone would owe the state $42 million under his plan. Rain fired back at the time, calling the proposal "the dumbest thing I've ever heard" in a January New York Post report.
On Wednesday, the day after the primary, Rain told The Post:
"I never believed voters were going to support singling out women and punishing them for doing completely legal work, so yes, I'm very happy to be keeping my money."
She did not stop there. Rain pointed to the gap between Fishback's ambitions and his results, telling The Post he "wanted to take 50% of my income because he didn't approve of how I make my living, and now he got about 10% of the vote."
Rain also pushed back on the idea that she objects to taxes in general, saying she has "never had a problem with paying [her] fair share" and that she already pays millions in taxes per month. Her objection, she said, was more specific:
"What I had a problem with was a politician deciding that people like me deserved a special 'sin tax' because he personally disapproved of our careers."
Rain co-founded the Bop House, a Florida compound that hosts a group of adult content creators whose members say they net a combined $15 million per month. Both her personal earnings figure and the Bop House revenue claim are self-reported.
Fishback laid out the reasoning behind his proposal in a January interview with NXR Studios. His language went well beyond fiscal policy. He told the outlet:
"I don't want young women who could otherwise be mothers raising families, rearing children, I don't want them to be selling their bodies to sick men online."
He continued: "And I don't want young, impressionable men who are straight from Christ... to be told and drawn into lust, and have their entire brain rewired."
The pitch combined social conservatism with a punitive tax mechanism, a combination that plainly failed to gain traction in a Republican primary electorate that had other priorities. Fishback did not respond to The Post's request for comment after the results came in.
Several key questions remain unanswered. It is unclear whether the Sin Tax was ever formally introduced as legislation or existed only as a campaign talking point. The proposal's scope, whether it would have applied only to Florida-based earners or extended more broadly, was never spelled out in detail.
In her comments to The Post, Rain went beyond celebrating the result and offered a challenge to politicians who want to fund public services:
"If you want to raise teachers' salaries or pay for kids' lunches, I'm all for that, but come up with a serious policy instead of using women and content creators as a political punching bag."
That line captures the political miscalculation at the heart of Fishback's campaign. Targeting a specific, legal industry with a confiscatory 50% rate, while naming individual earners on social media, looked less like serious tax policy and more like a culture-war stunt dressed up as a revenue measure. Republican voters in Florida, who had a Trump-endorsed candidate on the ballot, treated the proposal accordingly.
Donalds now moves forward as the GOP nominee. Fishback moves on with 10.5% and a reminder that voters can tell the difference between governing and grandstanding.
