GOP divisions highlighted in raucous Sarasota event featuring far right from across FL

The hard right "America First" faction of the GOP has been ascendant in Florida, challenging for party leadership posts and putting pressure on Republican lawmakers.

Key figures in this coalition of right wing activists and GOP leaders descended on Sarasota Friday in an attempt to force a no confidence vote on Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, who is running for reelection.

The vote attracted about 150 Republican activists who held a boisterous rally outside the meeting to put pressure on state GOP leaders to oppose McDaniel.

It also drew prominent Republicans such Congressman Matt Gaetz, a conservative firebrand who has been at the center of national politics recently for blocking House Speaker Kevin McCarthy from taking over the leadership role until the 15th ballot. Former Congressman Madison Cawthorn also was in attendance at the rally outside, along with a pair of individuals from the Proud Boys extremist group.

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The push for a no confidence resolution ultimately failed because not enough members of the Florida GOP executive committee were in attendance to have a quorum. There were 71 executive committee members in attendance and 129 were needed to allow the vote to proceed, but the man leading the effort still declared victory, saying the event sent the intended message.

"The quorum is a totally irrelevant metric, what matters is we had 71 people drive six, seven, eight hours away through the state and they're almost unanimous in opposition to Ronna McDaniel.... the message is loud and clear: nobody wants Ronna," said Anthony Sabatini, a former Republican state House member who now chairs the Lake County GOP.

Sabatini forced Friday's meeting by collecting enough signatures from other executive committee members. The event became another test of strength for the America First wing of the party, which has been battling for influence, and a sign of the divisions that continue to rack the GOP and pull it further right in the Trump era.

Hard right candidates have been seeking GOP leadership positions across Florida.

A candidate backed by Michael Flynn, former President Donald Trump's first national security adviser and a leader in the effort to overturn the 2020 election results, failed to win the Sarasota GOP chair position recently, but another Flynn acolyte won the race for Lee County GOP Chair, Sabatini took over the Lake County party and ultra conservative candidates were successful in other county GOP races.

Florida has become a mecca for high-profile figures on the far right, with individuals such as Flynn and Cawthorn moving here in recent years and lawmakers such as Gaetz commanding the national spotlight.

Every GOP congressman is a member of the Florida GOP executive committee, but Gaetz was the only one in attendance Friday.

"I think we need change in the Republican Party," Gaetz said after the meeting, adding that the failure to get a quorum was "disappointing."

"For all the things we have meetings about, this strikes me as one of the more important," he added.

Gaetz said he wants to replace McDaniel because he's "tired of losing."

Others in attendance agreed.

"Florida has run up big victories and then the rest of the country has failed to do that, so I think people are kind of frustrated, deservedly so," said Evan Power, the chair of the Leon County GOP who is running to lead the Florida GOP. "If you lose three football seasons in a row in Tallahassee you get fired as our football coach, that's kind of our view."

Republicans have been frustrated since losing the presidency in 2020 and failing to produce the red wave nationally in 2022 that many predicted.

Democrats maintained control of the U.S. Senate during the 2022 election cycle, despite a favorable political climate for the GOP. Republicans also lost key races for governor and only won a slim majority in the U.S. House.

Some of the most prominent failed GOP candidates, such as Kari Lake and Blake Masters in Arizona and Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, were hard right candidates backed by Trump who embraced his unfounded election fraud changes.

Yet despite voters rejecting these more extreme GOP candidates, there continues to be intense support for their views among many in the GOP base.

Alfie Oakes, a far-right businessman from Collier County who was at the U.S. Capitol when it was overrun by Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, spoke Friday at a rally outside the building were Florida GOP leaders were meeting about the no confidence resolution.

The rally attracted about 150 people, many of whom held up signs blasting McDaniel, who they view as a member of the GOP establishment and a RINO - Republican in Name Only - despite her close ties to Trump.

Oakes said he wants more of a focus on election issues.

"Election integrity is first and foremost," he said. "We've lost our Republic if we don't have fair elections."

Oakes also said McDaniel should be raising concerns about what is happening to those arrested for participating in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

"If I was head of the RNC the whole entire party would be jumping up and down about the injustice that's happening with the Jan. 6 people and the injustice that we're seeing with election integrity, but that's not what they're doing and it's intentional; she's bought and paid for," Oakes said of McDaniel.

Emma Vaughn, the spokeswoman for McDaniel's reelection effort, said the chair's decision to run for another term was "member driven."

Vaughn said RNC members are rallying around McDaniel "because of her unprecedented investments in the grassroots, election integrity, and minority communities, and for taking on Big Tech and the biased Commission on Presidential Debates."

Vaughn added that McDaniel will "continue building upon our investments and make the necessary improvements to compete and win in 2024."

The Sarasota rally was organized by Vic Mellor, who owns The Hollow, an outdoor event space in Venice that has become a gathering place for the far right.

"There's a political elite class that's ruling all of us and it has it's tentacles right into the RNC," Mellor said of his concerns about McDaniel.

Mellor and Oakes rejected the idea that ultra conservative factions could drive the GOP too far right and lead voters to conclude the party is too extreme.

"I don't believe that one bit, we're not too far right," Mellor said. "Our belief that government's too big and the government's too controlling is more center issue than what most people believe."

Florida GOP Chair Joe Gruters, who is backing McDaniel for RNC chair and is running for the RNC treasurer job, said he has concerns about the party becoming too "purist."

"You can't be a purist, zero sum party," he said.

Gruters, an early Trump backer who co-chaired his 2016 campaign in Florida, argued that McDaniel is a "winner" and those opposing her are a "vocal minority trying to steer the party in a different direction."

The divisions in the party aren't going away, though.

"RINO Republicans, that's what's gotten our country in this shape, it's not the Democrats, it's the weak Republicans," Oakes said.

The RNC chair vote is Jan. 27 at the party's winter conference in California. McDaniel is being challenged by Republican lawyer Harmeet Dhillon and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Ronna McDaniel protest draws Florida far right activists, Matt Gaetz