The race for Lee County Republican Party chair wasn’t decided until the third ballot was cast. But Michael Thompson, a business associate of Gen. Michael Flynn, won an election by a single vote.
It’s one of several critical victories tallies this weekend for a group of conservatives touting themselves as “America First,” bearers of the agenda of former President Donald Trump. Candidates from the same wing of the party won in Alachua and Hillsborough counties. More elections for party leadership will play out in the coming days, and could well impact votes for new state leadership for the Republican Party of Florida in February.
It’s unlikely any will unfold so dramatically as the contest in Lee County, the largest Florida County carried by Trump in the 2020 presidential election and the county that gave Gov. Ron DeSantis his largest raw vote margin of victory in the General Election this year.
Thompson faced two other challengers nominated for the county chairmanship, which is being vacated by newly elected state Sen. Jonathan Martin.
On a first ballot Saturday on Saturday at a Republican Executive Committee meeting, Thompson won 88 votes to Andrew Sund’s 71 and Missi Lastra’s 36 votes. As no candidate had a majority, a second vote was held, and Lastra endorsed Sund.
But a second vote produced a tie 96-96 result. Members debated whether to hold a third ballot or flip a coin, and decided to try another vote. With the extended election process testing the patience of the crowd, another round of ballots was cast, then counted by state committee members and tallied on a dry-erase board.
Ultimately, Thompson was 96-95, the result of an apparent Sund supporter giving up.
Thompson promised to have the party engage more on issues as opposed to just building party infrastructure.
“We have no committees available for volunteers to work on, we have a tired board who want to keep things the same and the two sides are trying to figure out the direction the REC will go moving forward,” Thompson said.
Thompson’s election was not universally welcomed. The vote outcome was “a dark day for the future of the Lee GOP,” said state Rep. Spencer Roach (R-76-Fort Myers), a staunchly conservative representative.
The reaction to his statement was emblematic of the tenor of the executive committee races.
“Apparently Spencer Roach has just jumped the proverbial shark and is now a full-on establishment RINO,” posted a MAGA supporter named Ragnar Danneskjöld on Facebook. “He really doesn’t like it that you ‘holocaust deniers’ (aka America First folks) won the Lee county REC. There have always been doubts as to his ‘conservative’ bonafides, now he’s let us all know the real Roach. That’s one of the benefits to the America First movement…these RINOs just have to expose themselves, like moths to a flame, or bugs to a roach motel.”
But Dr. Joseph Sansone, a REC member who pushed for aggressive resolutions to be taken up by the party earlier this year, felt pleased with the results. “Expect the Lee County Republican Executive Committee to grow dramatically and a much greater turnout for Trump 2024 and the other Republican nominees in 2024,” Sansone said.
Currently, the former executive committee member refuses to give the keys to the office and the bank account information to the new executive committee.
The old executive committee even took the toilet paper out of the office.