Rep. Randy Fine cruised to a decisive Republican primary win in Florida's 6th Congressional District on Tuesday, burying a challenger whose campaign leaned on open antisemitism and references to Hitler.
Fine, 52, captured 56.9% of the vote with most of the expected ballots counted, leaving far-right social media personality Dan Bilzerian a distant second at 18.7%. Aaron Baker, whom Fine had already beaten in an April 2025 special election, finished third with 13.0%, and Palm Coast City Councilor Charles Gambaro, a retired Army officer, trailed at 9.7%. The result was never close, and it confirmed what the district's deep-red electorate made plain: antisemitic provocations are not a winning strategy, even in the most solidly Republican corners of Florida.
The race drew national attention not for its competitiveness but for the nature of Bilzerian's campaign. The influencer, who built a social media following in the 2010s by posting photos of what he portrayed as a lavish lifestyle, ran an ad that called Fine, who is Jewish, a "fat Jew," a "Shylock," a "Jewish supremacist," and "Satan's creepy little minion." The ad used artificial intelligence to manipulate Fine's appearance, making him look heavier and showing him hugging a bag of cash while the image cut to an Israeli flag. Footage of Adolf Hitler played in the background as a singer asked, "Should we revisit that Austrian painter's opinions?"
The ad prompted a bipartisan response that is almost unheard of in today's Congress. House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries jointly condemned the spot. The Washington Examiner reported Johnson's statement directly:
"The vile attack ads against Congressman Randy Fine in Florida's 6th District are disgusting and should be condemned by all political leaders on the Right and Left."
Jeffries was equally blunt. He called Bilzerian's campaign "blatantly antisemitic" and said it "shocks the conscience."
That two leaders who agree on almost nothing felt compelled to issue a joint statement speaks to how far outside the bounds of normal political conduct Bilzerian's material fell. This was not a case of partisan pearl-clutching. The content of the ad and the social media posts that followed it were explicit enough that no reasonable interpretation could soften them.
In the days before the primary, Bilzerian escalated. On August 15, the Saturday before voters went to the polls, he posted an image from what the New York Post described as an impromptu campaign event, captioning it: "District 6 understands the jewish [sic] problem." Roughly six days earlier, he had shared a post that read: "It's not red against blue. It's us against the Jew."
Voters answered. Fine won by more than three to one over Bilzerian, a margin that left no ambiguity about where the district stood.
Fine is not a figure without controversy. He has drawn criticism for statements about Muslims and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that his opponents have characterized as inflammatory. In a Fox News interview, Fine compared the conflict in Gaza to World War II:
"In World War II, we did not negotiate a surrender with the Nazis. We did not negotiate a surrender with the Japanese. We nuked the Japanese twice in order to get unconditional surrender. That needs to be the same here."
In February, he posted on X: "If they force us to choose, the choice between dogs and Muslims is not a difficult one." More recently, he posted about New York City's Zohran Mamdani: "Jihadi Mamdani does not belong as Mayor of NYC. He needs to be deaturalized and sent back home to Uganda."
Those statements drew sharp reactions. But in a deep-red district on Florida's eastern coast that includes Daytona Beach, Fine's strong pro-Israel stance and Trump endorsement proved more than enough to hold his base. Several congressional seats have changed hands in recent cycles, and Fine has held this one firmly since winning the April 2025 special election to replace Mike Waltz, who left after President Trump tapped him first as national security adviser and then as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Fine raised over $4 million this cycle, dwarfing Bilzerian, who self-loaned nearly $1 million to his own campaign. The financial gap matched the gap at the ballot box.
Fine's win was part of a broader pattern on Tuesday. Ashley Moody won the Florida Senate Republican primary with 79.6% of the vote, positioning her to hold Marco Rubio's former seat after Rubio became Secretary of State. Her eventual Democratic opponent, DSA candidate Angie Nixon, was considered so far left that analysts shifted the general election forecast from "Likely R" to "Safe R."
On the Democratic side in Florida's 6th District, local realtor Eric Yonce won a four-way primary with 32.1% of the vote. Local police officer Ronnie Murchison-Rivera took 26.9%, entrepreneur Steve Morgan earned 23.3%, and Marine veteran Robert David Cooper II finished at 17.7%. Fine is described as heavily favored to win the November general election against whichever Democrat emerges.
Fine's earlier special election victory last April offered a preview. He won that race with roughly 57% of the vote, AP News reported, a result that helped shore up the Republican House majority. After that win, Fine declared: "This victory isn't mine. It is Donald Trump's. It is first electoral win since Nov. 5. And Republicans overwhelmingly showed they remain committed to his agenda."
The GOP House majority now stands at 220 to 213, a margin narrow enough that every seat matters. National Review noted that voter turnout in both Florida special elections was low, fewer than 200,000 votes cast in either district, but the margins held. As National Review's Jim Geraghty put it: "If Democrats couldn't win in either of these districts in a lower-turnout special election, with huge fundraising numbers, they're probably not winning in these districts for a long, long time."
That assessment applies doubly to a primary where the challenger's pitch was built on antisemitic slurs rather than policy. Florida's primary season has tested incumbents across both parties this cycle, but Fine never faced a serious threat from Bilzerian's campaign, only a serious stain on the process.
Bilzerian's 18.7% is worth pausing on. Nearly one in five Republican primary voters in the district chose a candidate whose closing argument included the phrase "the jewish problem." That is a small share of a low-turnout primary in one Florida district, but it is not zero. Republican leaders in Washington moved quickly to distance the party from Bilzerian's rhetoric, and the results suggest the base agreed.
Still, the episode exposed a fault line that Republican leadership would prefer did not exist. When fringe figures with large social media followings can self-fund a congressional primary and inject open antisemitism into a race, the party has to spend time and credibility swatting it down instead of making its case on policy.
Fine did not have to answer for Bilzerian's conduct. He had to answer for his own statements, and the voters of Florida's 6th District decided, by a wide margin, that they were satisfied with the answers. Republicans have shown willingness to police their own ranks when conduct crosses clear lines, and the bipartisan condemnation of Bilzerian's campaign reinforced that standard.
Bilzerian spent nearly a million dollars of his own money to win less than a fifth of the vote in a Republican primary while running on antisemitic slogans. Voters in Florida's 6th District gave him exactly the answer he earned.
