Florida Republican State Senator Randy Fine, 50, has represented the 19th district of his state since November 5, 2024, and is running for Congress in a special election for Florida’s 6th district. If elected, Fine would replace Michael Waltz, who resigned from his House seat after being appointed by President Donald Trump as National Security Advisor in January. President Trump and Waltz have endorsed Fine for Congress, along with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Majority Whip Tom Emmer, Majority Leader Steve Scalise, U.S. Senator Rick Scott, and many other politicians, sheriffs, and organizations including the NRA, AIPAC, and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America.
In a November 23, 2024 post on X, President Trump described Fine as “an INCREDIBLE Fighter who will work tirelessly with me to Stop Inflation, Grow our Economy, Secure the Border, Champion our Military/Vets, Restore American Energy DOMINANCE, Protect our always under siege Second Amendment, and restore PEACE THRUGH STRENGTH.”
Fine told The Jewish Press on a phone call, “I think he (President Trump) wanted another Jewish warrior in Congress…another Republican Jew.” Fine disclosed that people tell him he says what they think but can’t say, to which he replied, “That’s not true. I say what everyone should say. I’m just brave enough to speak the truth.”
Fine’s Democratic opponent, a public school math teacher, is affiliated with the Islamic Center of Orlando and the Florida LGBTQ+ Democratic Caucus, according to USA Today. In a post on X, Fine called a campaign ad of his “antisemitic,” and said that it “comes from his deep-seated hate of Israel and Jews.”
The tough, no-nonsense legislature that Fine has passed reflects his brazen outspokenness, and his fierce determination to defend and protect the Jewish community. Signed in Jerusalem in 2023, Florida HB 269 penalizes individuals who throw antisemitic fliers onto private property and project antisemitic imagery onto commercial buildings with up to five years of imprisonment, probation, and a $5,000 fine.
“That problem has stopped…gone. It doesn’t happen anymore,” Fine said. “All the same Nazis and hateful people – they’re still around…they just know their actions will have consequences.”
Fine said that in 2019, Florida was the first state in the U.S. to pass the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism into law (HB 741), which was also signed in Jerusalem. Fine explained, “In our colleges and universities, you have to treat antisemitism the same way you treat racism. That’s why we haven’t had encampments on Florida campuses – for the same reason we don’t have Ku Klux Klan rallies. If you do either of them, you’re going to get thrown out.”
Florida was also the first state to implement a zero-tolerance policy for contracts with companies that support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS). “We passed a bill calling CAIR a terrorist organization (HR 1209). Just this week, we called Students for Justice in Palestine a terrorist organization in a bill that I passed (SR 1684),” Fine stated. “There’s so many of them…Universal School Choice – to make sure that Jewish kids could get vouchers to go to Jewish day schools. Every year, I’ve done something to protect the Jewish people in Florida.”
Fine started advocating for the Jewish community through legislature in 2017, when he was asked by the Orthodox Union to raise money for security for Jewish day schools.
His aggressive approach has made life in Florida considerably different from other states. Fine commented, “Compare what’s going on in Florida to Jews, to New York or California…If I can do nationally what I have done in Florida, there’s going to be a lot of unhappy Muslim terrorists on their way home.” Referring to HB 1, passed in 2021, Fine matter-of-factly stated, “We don’t have people blocking the streets in Florida because I helped pass a bill that says you can run them over.”
He is running a bill (SB 814) to extend concealed carry rights to college students. “If Jews were allowed to carry, no one would have blocked their way at UCLA,” he said.
Fine explained that he embraces the “Hebrew Hammer” moniker given to him. “I strike first. I strike hard, and there’s no mercy.”
Fine learned how to fight back against antisemitism as a result of his tough childhood growing up in Lexington, Kentucky. He was one of the only Jews at his school and was taunted by other kids who called him a “Kentucky Fried Jew.”
He said that at the age of 13, he decided to never let anyone push him around because of his religion, and that he would never again apologize for being Jewish.
He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and from Harvard Business School with the highest academic honor. After building successful businesses, he retired at age 40 before entering the political arena.
Today, Fine lives with his wife, Wendy, and two sons, Jacob, 17, and David, 13, in a small town in Florida. Fine said that when his kids were born he “made the decision that they were not going to go through what I did, and that is a promise I have failed to deliver on.” He elaborated, “You should be glad that I don’t let myself off the hook, because that’s what fuels me to do this.”
Taking after his father, Fine’s son David is learning how to fearlessly defeat opponents. Fine relayed how he took his family to Israel last summer, and how David toured the biblical sites of the king he is named after. He went to the riverbed where King David fought Goliath, and collected 200 stones that looked like they could have gone into a slingshot, and gave them to guests at his bar mitzvah.
Fine said he is most proud of a powerful speech he gave on October 18, 2023, in front of 100 legislators at the Florida Capitol rotunda in Tallahassee, about his grandmother, Lizzy, who survived the Russian pogroms when she was just three years old. In harrowing detail, he described how her parents and eight of her brothers and sisters were murdered on top of her, as they shielded her in a “pile of death” that she and her brother spent hours disentangling themselves from.
“Everybody thought I was talking about October 7, and I wasn’t,” Fine said. “The purpose of telling the story was for people to understand that October 7 is not a an anomaly. It’s just the latest in this, in a millennium old effort by those who hate us to kill us.”
People wiped their eyes behind him as he spoke, and Fine remembered hearing his non-Jewish friends gasp when they realized this massacre was not uncommon.
In 2020, Fine signed HB 741, the Holocaust and Black History Education Legislation, into law. Fine explained, “I redefined how Holocaust education was done in Florida after we had the principal in Boca Raton tell a parent he couldn’t say that the Holocaust happened.”
This past week, Fine’s son Jacob was in the hospital with an emergency medical condition. Fine said that when he called him, asking if he wanted him to come home, Jacob replied, “No, dad, I need you to go win your election!”
Election day is April 1, 2025. For more information about Senator Randy Fine, please click see www.voterandyfine.com.
(You can see a video of Fine’s October 18, 2023 speech: https://x.com/VoteRandyFine/status/1714737572688109950).
Mandatory early voting period: March 22 – 29.
