FORT MYERS, Fla. — The race to replace Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, who's running for governor, has drawn a unique cast of characters.
The cast includes former members of Congress and pardon recipients from President Trump.
And many of them have only recent ties to the district, which includes parts of Cape Coral, Naples and Fort Myers, and the state.
One of the candidates running for this southwest Florida U.S. House seat is John Strand, a former model and actor, and a convicted and pardoned Jan. 6 rioter, who grew up in Beverly Hills, Calif.
But Strand is not the only candidate running for the strongly Republican 19th Congressional District without deep roots in Florida.
In this crowded GOP primary, where almost all 10 candidates are Trump loyalists, a tension has developed between candidates who claim deeper ties to the community and those who recently moved here — for work, warmer weather or to run in this race.
Even the candidate who won Trump's endorsement last week, Catalina Lauf, moved to Florida recently, and ran for Congress multiple times in Illinois, as recently as 2022.
While some candidates are accusing each other of being carpetbaggers — someone who relocates to gain political power — voters, many of whom are themselves out-of-state transplants, say they care more about the representation of their conservative values than where someone's from.
"Carpetbagger" is a campaign attack line
Outside Seed to Table, a popular local grocery store, Jeanine Rutherford, a 67-year-old Naples resident, said one of her preferred candidates is Strand, because "he comes from a very conservative family and he wants to preserve conservative values," and that it didn't matter that he wasn't from Florida.
Inside the venue, Strand said it was "rich and hypocritical" for some candidates to call others "carpetbaggers" because a lot of Florida residents are from somewhere else.
He stressed that he moved to the district before the seat became open, adding, "A lot of people in Florida 19th … very clearly moved here it seems like five minutes ago to run for Byron's seat."
Other candidates, such as Jim Schwartzel, a local media mogul and one of the few longtime Florida candidates, have campaigned by attacking those who don't have deep ties to the state.
"Many of the candidates running for Congress here aren't even from here," one ad for Schwartzel states. "Failed politicians from Chicago and New York couldn't get elected in their own state, so they moved here."
The ad also takes aim at candidates who did get elected, like former Congressman Chris Collins, from New York. He served time in prison for insider trading and lying to the FBI before receiving a pardon from Trump in late 2020. Collins declined to comment for this story.
Schwartzel's ad also targets Jim Oberweis, a former Illinois state lawmaker who ran for multiple offices in that state.
"I've owned a home in Florida longer than any of my opponents," said Oberweis, when asked how he reacts to the term "carpetbagger" being lobbed at him. "And we've had a home in Bonita Springs for 16 years."
The ad also attacks Lauf, who has faced Oberweis before in their former home state.
"I can't control where I was born, but I can control where I want to build a life," Lauf said. "And this is where my husband and I wanted to raise our future family with like-minded values, in the free state of Florida."
In early August, while campaigning with veterans in Naples, standing under palm trees buzzing with cicadas, Lauf said her belief in "faith, family and freedom" sets her apart from other candidates who don't embody those values. She accused some of them of being liberals.
In Trump's Thursday evening endorsement of Lauf, he said she "has proven she has the Courage and Wisdom to deliver strong results," pointing to her tenure at the U.S. Department of Commerce during his first administration.
A cast of characters
Since Florida does not hold primary runoffs, a candidate could win Tuesday's nomination with a relatively small percentage of the vote. That candidate will likely coast to victory in November in this safe red seat.
Perhaps the most prominent name is Madison Cawthorn, who was ousted from his North Carolina congressional seat in 2022 after multiple scandals during his time in office. He declined to comment for this story.
Other candidates include Linda Sawyer, who is campaigning on her health care plan, and has run for Congress from Michigan before, where she lives part time.
There's also Ola Hawatmeh, who previously ran for Congress in New York.
"I'd rather be named a carpetbagger that's making a difference than someone that was born and raised here and has millions that hasn't done anything for the district," said Hawatmeh.
One more transplant is Greg Bukowski, who on his website said his nickname is Tex, because he recently moved to Florida from Texas.
One reason why previously out-of-state-candidates feel so comfortable running in this district could be because many voters themselves are transplants, and don't appear to put too much stock into their representative being local.
"I frankly don't care that they're from other states," said Therese Wilkinson, a 26-year-old stay-at-home mom who lives in Fort Myers. "If you look around a lot of the 19th District, there's a lot of transplants down here."
In downtown Fort Myers, Jim Dean, an operations manager who splits time between Florida and Pennsylvania, said he also doesn't care about a candidate being from out of state.
"I don't think it really matters where they've from," Dean said. "It's about the foundation."
But Dean is voting for Mike Pedersen, a retired Marine and former boxing and wrestling coach who's lived in Cape Coral for 26 years, because "he's not an anchor baby" and Dean appreciates his "old school American values."
Despite his ties to Florida, Pedersen has barely made a dent in local polls.
Mercedes Price-Harry, a local county Republican Party official, said the array of out-of-state candidates is just the tip of the iceberg. There were so many other hopefuls without any connection to the local community who called asking if they should move to the district and run, she said.
She warned them from assuming they could run away with a win.
"People see southwest Florida and they think we're ruby red and they think … it's the sleepy little community in the corner way down in the middle of nowhere," said Price-Harry. "[They think] I'm going to go down there. I'm going to talk about my conservative bona fides, even if I'm not from here. And I'm just going to have them eating out of my hand."
Price-Harry added that people don't realize how right wing, particular and protective of community people in Southwest Florida are.
"What they don't realize is when they get here, we're savages," said Price-Harry.
