Florida congressional candidate Mara Macie said in an interview that she would vote opposite of incumbent Rep. John Rutherford, who she criticized as voting like a Democrat.
She predicted Rutherford would vote for a $95 billion foreign aid package that included $60 billion for Ukraine but nothing for border security.
“I mean, at the end of the day, I would be voting the exact opposite of the way he votes. He votes like a Democrat,” Macie said.
Macie warned constituents of how Rutherford would vote and said it has turned people off who have known and voted for him for years.
She noted Rutherford’s refusal to back Jim Jordan for Speaker and said his voting record is poor, with failing grades on conservative scorecards.
“I have been speaking to constituents at events all week, and just like you, I already know how he’s going to vote, so I’ve warned them I said, ‘Watch this vote, see how it turns out because I guarantee you he’s going to vote against your interests, against what you’re asking him to do,’” Macie added.
“And it has turned off a lot of his voters, and I mean people that have been voting for him for years when he was a sheriff here, and new voters in particular because here in Florida we have a lot of people coming in, and a lot of them are like, ‘How is this guy your congressman?’” she said. “But I think that we’re gonna… have a good fight for the seat even though he has made a name for himself, he’s the incumbent, but he has done a lot of things that constituents are not happy with.”
Macie said Rutherford isn’t listening to constituents and the race will be competitive despite Rutherford’s incumbency.
“I think people are starting to see that he’s just voting the way that the swamp wants him to vote, that the people agree up there, and he is not listening to the phone calls, to the text messages, and he is getting a lot of them,” Macie said.
“I have people tell me every time I’m out speaking, ‘We tried to contact his office. We got a canned response,’ or ‘We got an aid,’ or ‘Someone else responded to us,’ or ‘We didn’t get a response at all.’ People don’t feel like he’s listening to them even if they’ve known him. So, outside of the loyalists, people really are looking for new representation, and I can’t blame them. I cannot blame them.”
She believes local media favors the establishment and doesn’t fairly cover her campaign.
“The Jordan thing is definitely the thing that woke people up; that’s what got me into this race is that people started calling me and messaging me and saying, ‘Listen, you said that if nobody was running against Rutherford again, that you would do it,’” Macie said. “And, you know, I did, I told people that… I was going to give them a choice for better representation if nobody stepped up to the plate. So that’s what I did.”
“Right down to the voting record — that woke people up, but people weren’t paying attention to the fact that his voting record before that was garbage,” she added. “I mean, he has an ‘F’ on four conservative scorecards that I can think of off the top of my head, and a worse ‘F,’ a worse failing grade, than Liz Cheney when she was in office.”
“Local media is in the pocket of the establishment, so they’re not covering me because they are trying to make sure that anybody who doesn’t follow the bigger news outlets, just they follow local news, they’re trying to make sure they don’t know who I am,” Macie said. “And if they have to publish something about me… you can just tell by the way that stories are written, they’re trying to do damage control for John.”
