Matt Gaetz and Mark Lombardo make closing arguments to voters

U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz and GOP challenger Mark Lombardo spent the last hours of their campaigns for Florida's 1st Congressional District seat on Monday making their closing arguments to voters ahead of Tuesday's primary.

Much as he has done throughout the last few months in which he campaigned alongside well-known MAGA figures, Gaetz on Monday stumped with Don Trump Jr. at Pensacola State College.

Gaetz was also joined at the rally by Kimberly Guilfoyle, attorney and television news personality who is dating Trump Jr., and U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, who has been a conservative ally of Gaetz in Congress.

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Controversial U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, sent a video message that was played before Gaetz's speech that said she wanted to be at the event but couldn't make it because of flight cancelations.

With the campaign launched by Lombardo, Gaetz is facing his toughest primary challenge since he won the GOP nomination for the seat in 2016. Former military pilot Greg Merk is also seeking the GOP nomination for the seat, but his campaign has only raised $11,000.

Speaking to reporters before the Monday event, Gaetz said his only vulnerability in Tuesday's election was low voter turnout.

"If there's high voter turnout, I have every confidence that I'm going to be re-nominated by my party to serve in this district to protect our military, to secure the border and to ensure that the Republican Party is a fighting party again," Gaetz said.

Lombardo, a former FedEx executive and Marine Corps veteran running against Gaetz, spent Monday campaigning much like he has throughout the past few months, in small grassroots opportunities. On Monday, he met with Santa Rosa County voters as they walked into the Coffee Break Cafe. The bulk of Lombardo's work in reaching voters has been through his ad blitz against Gaetz.

Lombardo told the News Journal on Monday that he has not run a negative campaign.

"We have only told the truth," Lombardo said.

Lombardo said that Gaetz is not representing Northwest Florida and criticized the congressman for missing votes in Congress, being under investigation for sex trafficking and making disparaging comments about women abortion-rights activists.

"Regardless of your political persuasion, it serves no useful purpose to be degrading to any human being," Lombardo said. "That's Nazi Germany stuff. ... If somebody had said in a boardroom what he said about women with the microphone going and being in the minutes, he would have been fired on the spot."

Lombardo said that he feels optimistic about Tuesday's primary competition and that Gaetz was "caught flat-footed" by his campaign.

"He thought it was going to be just one more election that he would who would skate through," Lombardo said.

Lombardo has spent more than $500,000, with $340,000 of that going into advertising as of the latest campaign finance reports published Aug. 3.

"Mark Lombardo's recent ads are just the string in a very embarrassing campaign he's run, and I have every expectation that he'll have an embarrassing result tomorrow," Gaetz said.

Trump Jr. said Gaetz has been a fighter for the "MAGA" movement and compared the "attacks" against Gaetz to the scandals his father faced as president that "went nowhere."

Gaetz has hit back against Lombardo with advertisements of his own, accusing Lombardo of being a "liberal" by tying a founder of the political consulting firm Lombardo hired for his campaign to a nonprofit group that works with musicians to register people to vote at music events, including Pride events.

Gaetz's campaign has outspent Lombardo to date, spending $526,000 in advertising alone, according to his campaign's latest finance report. Gaetz has spent a total of $802,788 on his campaign since July.

Jim Little can be reached at jwlittle@pnj.com and 850-208-9827.

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Matt Gaetz and Mark Lombardo make closing arguments to voters