{"id":56530,"date":"2022-12-19T20:43:53","date_gmt":"2022-12-20T01:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=56530"},"modified":"2022-12-19T20:43:59","modified_gmt":"2022-12-20T01:43:59","slug":"america-first-candidates-prevail-in-lee-county-gop-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2022\/12\/america-first-candidates-prevail-in-lee-county-gop-race\/","title":{"rendered":"America First candidates prevail in Lee county GOP race"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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The race for Lee County Republican Party chair wasn\u2019t decided until the third ballot was cast. But\u00a0Michael Thompson, a business associate of Gen.\u00a0Michael Flynn, won an election by a single vote.<\/p>\n\n\n

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It\u2019s one of several critical victories tallies this weekend for a group of conservatives touting themselves as \u201cAmerica First,\u201d bearers of the agenda of former President\u00a0Donald 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\u00a0in February<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s unlikely any will unfold so dramatically as the contest in Lee County<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u00a0Jonathan Martin<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Thompson faced two other challengers nominated for the county chairmanship, which is being vacated by newly elected state Sen. Jonathan Martin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a first ballot Saturday on Saturday at a Republican Executive Committee meeting, Thompson won 88 votes to Andrew Sund\u2019s 71 and Missi Lastra\u2019s 36 votes. As no candidate had a majority, a second vote was held, and Lastra endorsed Sund.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, Thompson was 96-95, the result of an apparent Sund supporter giving up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thompson promised to have the party engage more on issues as opposed to just building party infrastructure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe 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,\u201d Thompson said.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Lal Spencer Roach<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Thompson\u2019s election was not universally welcomed. The vote outcome was \u201ca dark day for the future of the Lee GOP,\u201d said state Rep. Spencer Roach (R-76-Fort Myers), a staunchly conservative representative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reaction to his statement was emblematic of the tenor of the executive committee races.<\/p>\n\n\n

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\u201cApparently Spencer Roach has just jumped the proverbial shark and is now a full-on establishment RINO,\u201d posted a MAGA supporter named Ragnar Danneskj\u00f6ld\u00a0on Facebook<\/a>.\u00a0 \u201cHe really doesn\u2019t like it that you \u2018holocaust deniers\u2019 (aka America First folks) won the Lee county REC.\u00a0 There have always been doubts as to his \u2018conservative\u2019 bonafides, now he\u2019s let us all know the real Roach.\u00a0 That\u2019s one of the benefits to the America First movement\u2026these RINOs just have to expose themselves, like moths to a flame, or bugs to a roach motel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But Dr.\u00a0Joseph Sansone, a REC member who pushed for\u00a0aggressive resolutions\u00a0to be taken up by the party earlier this year, felt pleased with the results. \u201cExpect the Lee County Republican Executive Committee to grow dramatically and a much greater turnout for Trump 2024 and the other Republican nominees in 2024,\u201d Sansone said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, the former executive committee member refuses to give the keys to the office and the bank account information to the new executive committee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The old executive committee even took the toilet paper out of the office.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The race for Lee County Republican Party chair wasn\u2019t decided until the third ballot was cast. But\u00a0Michael Thompson, a business associate of Gen.\u00a0Michael Flynn, won an election by a single… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":56533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[2011],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56530"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56537,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56530\/revisions\/56537"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/56533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}