Rep. Randy Fine was sworn into office a month ago Friday, but he already has an idea of what Republicans need to do while they control Congress and the White House.
“We need to show we can govern,” Fine, 51, told The Daily Signal.
Fine, R-Fla., was elected in Florida’s 6th Congressional District on April 1 in a special election to fill the seat left vacant by U.N. Ambassador-designate Mike Waltz, and was sworn in the next day.
He served in Florida’s state legislature for nearly a decade, and it’s an experience he thinks prepared him for Congress.
“The reason the Florida Legislature was 61-59 [Republican] 20 years ago, and it’s 87-33 today is, we showed we can govern,” said Fine.
“And so, we have a team captain, his name’s Donald Trump, and it is our job to deliver on the promises that President Trump made, that the voters overwhelmingly voted for. If we deliver on the agenda that the voters voted for, we’re going to win next year, and we’ll win a lot. And our five-vote majority [in the House] will become 15, or 20, or 25.”
The newcomer already has some ideas of how to bring Florida-style legislation to the national scale. Fine, who serves on the House Education and Workforce Committee, says Florida’s education policies should go national.
“The issues that we are talking about are issues that I have personal knowledge of. Many of the policy issues we already passed in Florida, so we’re just trying to get the rest of the country to catch up,” he said.
“Universal school choice would be one. I think that every student, no matter where they live in America, should have that. And then eradicating antisemitism and Muslim terror on college campuses will be another one. I think higher education is fundamentally broken in this country. I think they’ve lost their legitimacy to frankly even exist at this point.”
The issue of antisemitism is personal for Fine.
As a Jew and an outspoken friend of Israel, he proudly displays a plaque on his office’s wall reading, “Senator Randy Fine ‘The Hebrew Hammer,’” gifted to him when he was a state senator.
“I didn’t come up with it, but I have embraced it,” he said with a smile when asked about the nickname.
“You won’t find an a more pro-Israel member than me,” he said. “I believe that Israel fights the fights that we don’t have to.”
“I believe standing with Israel is standing with America, and I’ll continue to do that. But also, it’s not just a fight in Israel. The Muslim terrorists have come to America. We see them on our college campuses every day. And so, rooting them out, sending them home is a critical thing for us to be doing.”
Fine was likely referencing the Trump administration’s revocation of student visas for noncitizens accused of promoting the actions of Hamas.
A graduate of Harvard, Fine says that campus antisemitism is something of a new phenomenon from his experience.
“It was not easy for a conservative 35 years ago, but I never felt unsafe as a Jewish student. Never one time. And that’s what’s different today,” he said.
“The universities have literally said, we support Muslim terror. We’re going to protect Muslim terror, and if you’re Jewish—well, good luck to you. And that’s what’s changed, and that’s what’s got to stop.”
Another issue Fine cares about is gun rights advocacy.
Asked how he would champion gun rights in the House, he said, “I’m considering. My last bill that I presented in the Florida Senate was a bill for campus carry, to say that whatever your Second Amendment rights are off campus, [they] don’t go away when you come on campus.”
Fine’s justification for that policy is the Florida State University shooting in April, which he partly attributes to the fact that the campus was nominally a “gun-free zone.”
“Focusing on gun control doesn’t solve that problem,” he said.
“There was gun control at Florida State. Florida State’s a ‘gun-free zone.’ It’s against the law. I actually tried telling my Democratic colleagues: I said, ‘Stop lying. There was no shooting at Florida State.’”
“They’re like, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘We had a gun-control law. So, how could there be a shooting? It can’t possibly have happened. There’s a law that says you can’t bring guns on campus, and you tell me all the time that gun control works,’” he said, mocking liberal gun control advocacy.
Fine is still learning his way around the Capitol.
“You don’t get a lot of orientation. You just sort of get a key and a pin and a voting card and get told, ‘Good luck,’” he said.
But if there’s one thing that Fine is excited about, it’s the direction of the Democratic Party.
“I love the direction they’re going,” he said. “I think they should get even crazier. Please primary your members with even more lunatic nut jobs than you already have.”
“Look, I think the Democratic Party is dangerous. Again, these are people who think boys can be girls and boys who play girls sports, and obsess about pronouns, and support Muslim terror. It’s dangerous, and they seem to be doubling down and tripling down and quadrupling down on all of that stuff. I think that would be good for us. But I think it’s terrible for America.”
