Establishment RINOs are afraid that their anointed candidate in Florida’s Fifth Congressional District is losing ground, Mara Macie told host Matt Boyle on Breitbart News Saturday as her race entered the final stage before the August 20 primary.
Macie and Boyle discussed Rep. John Rutherford’s (R-FL) record and reputation in Washington, including his ties to disgraced former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY).
Boyle called Rutherford “one of the total establishment losers in Washington, DC,” adding, “This guy has the worst voting record of any Republican in Congress right now. Just a terrible person. Totally corrupt.”
He recapped Cheney’s fall from grace, ultimately losing reelection in her Wyoming primary after capturing less than 30 percent in the Republican primary.
“Liz Cheney, our audience is very familiar with her,” Boyle said. “She’s a terrible person, she voted to impeach Trump. She led the January 6 committee with the Democrats and Nancy Pelosi and the guy who literally wants to take Secret Service away from Donald Trump – Bennie Thompson from Mississippi, total Democrat. And so Liz Cheney, that had one of the worst voting records per all the different conservative ranking systems.” Yet Boyle pointed out that Rutherford, despite representing a solidly conservative district, “actually votes worse than Liz Cheney did according to every single ranking service.”
Macie ticked off a number of prominent conservative organizations whose voting scorecards show Rutherford scored less conservative than Cheney – including Heritage Foundation, the Freedom Index, and CPAC – and discussed how Rutherford’s voting record is coming back to bite him.
“You name it, he scores worse than Liz Cheney on all of them,” Macie said.
Macie said many residents of the district who have known John throughout his long career as a politician – many who even have “personal relationships, personal friendships” with him – are unfamiliar with his voting record.
“People do this across the country. It’s a matter of ‘we don’t think it’s our guy,” she said. “That’s the problem in Congress. Overall, Congress gets terrible ratings across the board in the nation. But when you ask them about their personal Congress representative in the House, or even on the Senate side, they will say, ‘Oh, no, no, no, my guy is good.’”
She said people are astounded when she informs others about his voting record. “A lot of these people are surprised. And they say, well, by the end of the conversation, they’re saying, all right, I’ll take a look. Even if they are good friends with John, they’ll say I’ll take a look. So I’m even getting somewhere amongst the people that really do love John. I mean, I’ve had people tell me, after years and years of friendship, John, they’re still friends with John but they’re gonna vote for me, but it’s the people that aren’t actually paying attention at all that I still need to get through to.”
Boyle and Macie discussed the impact her many endorsements in the district, including the St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee and prominent local conservatives, are making as she runs her grassroots, door-knocking campaign.
“I can point to these organizations and people and say, ‘Listen, there’s a reason they’re behind me,’ Macie said. She continued, “We have a lot more support and a lot more people that are willing to at least entertain the idea of switching their vote from John to me, but from what I’m hearing, [Rutherford’s campaign is] actually doing push polls, and that wasn’t something they would have done back in ’22 because they felt safe and confident. But they’re doing them now, which tells me that they are feeling the heat.”
Macie noted the energy of her campaign – “We all know he is not doing the job; it’s time for John to retire” – while elaborating on some of the challenges of running against a well-financed establishment candidate, including finding commercial businesses who will allow her to place signs on their property.
“It really is a fight against the establishment, which takes money,” she said. “We’re going to try to get out a mailer… Mailers cost a whole lot of money. I think a lot of people need to recognize that as well. Mailers cost tens of thousands of dollars to send out [to] a district such as mine.”
But the ascendant Macie is undeterred. “I have the regular grassroots people, the American people, supporting my campaign, so I have to choose to spend every dollar extremely wisely, which is a good thing for someone who’s going to go to Congress,” she said. “But that is the difference between a big campaign and a little campaign. If you’re getting mailers, it is coming from someone who is backed by big money.”
Boyle, a resident of Macie’s district, discussed interactions he has had with voters enthusiastic to cast their ballot for her. “They know that their congressman is a failure and they know who you are,” he told Macie. “And the message is getting out, right?”
He continued, “I think this has taken on a life of its own. I think the establishment could be good, very shocked and caught by surprise here. And that’s why they’re starting to do the things you’re talking about here. Whether it be push polls or whether it be ads, or whether it be whatever. They’re scrambling because they realize, ‘oh my gosh, we underestimated this woman.’”
Macie discussed how important the race is, not just locally but on the national level during this election cycle.
“I can’t emphasize enough that this is our chance to get a RINO out of office because they know how weak he is this time and how close he is to being taken over,” Macie asserted. “And if they prevail, and they get John through this election, they are not going to run him again. They are going to pick another one of their RINOs, and they’re going to pop them in there. And they’re gonna say, oh, no, this is a grassroots guy. Everybody loves him. He’s done so and so, such and such, and all these things that you love, and this guy is so much better than last guy, but really, it’s just a replacement for John, and it’s going to end up being the same thing after a couple of years in office. It’s just going to be another uniparty, establishment RINO choice.”
She recalled a conversation during a Republican event Friday night in Jacksonville featuring Roger Stone and Laura Loomer in which she had an opportunity to speak to voters:
One of the John loyalists came up to me and he says to me, ‘why are you running against John?’ And I think that he really thought that I’m doing this because I aspire to be a politician, which I absolutely do not. I never wanted to be a politician. I follow politics. I care about politics. We’re a military family. I care about who’s sending my husband, my friends to war. And I said to him ‘because John’s record is so bad.’ And he said well, ‘what is he voted that’s bad?’ And I listed all these things and everything I said to him he wanted to have an argument for, but he just kind of nodded his head like ‘yeah, that’s bad’ too.
So it really is a matter of opening up your friends, your family, and your neighbors’ eyes and talking if you are in this district. We need you to communicate with everybody you know, because we need people to turn out on August 20. And vote for me. This will be our last chance to get a RINO out of CD five and Florida.
Boyle noted that Rutherford is “not even really doing a real campaign” and asked if he had agreed to debate Macie.
“Let’s be honest. He’s never really had to run a campaign,” she replied. “He has people do it for him because he was chosen to run for this seat. And even when he ran for sheriff, I don’t suppose he was out every single day from morning until night knocking on doors like I am. So it’s not like he’s always been able to be accessible.” She continued:
I know he was accessible previously, but not to the extent that [he was] showing up on doors like I am showing up on doors, and that is exactly the difference between him and I, I was not the chosen one. So when I’ve asked if he would do a debate, actually he was asked last spring if he had an opponent this time, if he would debate that opponent, and he said he absolutely would. I believe we have it in recording somewhere. However, he has just not done that. He is not showing up to events, willing to come and see me and have that debate. He’s just not doing it…
But he won’t do it even though he said he would because he knows he will lose.
Boyle reiterated his standing offer to appear on Breitbart News Saturday – an invitation Rutherford has not accepted.
“I know people who are close to him have said that he wants to talk and so on and so forth,” Boyle said. “He doesn’t have the guts to come on the show before the August 20 primary and answer some real questions about his stock trades. He doesn’t have the guts to stand before the people and do a debate. He won’t do it.”
Macie encouraged anyone interesting in supporting her campaign to reach out to her.
“If you have any big donors or little donors or any donors at all out there, we are accepting money in order to get those mailers out and to get to the people that are not able to be reached via social media or other platforms,” she closed. “So please feel free to reach out to me, I’m pretty responsive and get back to people pretty quickly.”
Just like a public servant should.
Breitbart News Saturday airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 10:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. Eastern.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.