Mara Macie overwhelmingly secured the endorsement of the St. Johns County Republican Executive Committee on Thursday night, a critical development in Macie’s ascendant bid to take out incumbent establishment Rep. John Rutherford (R-FL).
St. Johns is one of only two counties inside Florida’s Fifth Congressional District, representing a wealth of Republican primary voters.
“I am pleased to announce that I have been endorsed by the St. Johns County GOP,” Macee said in a statement. “With this endorsement, the Committeemen and Committeewomen of St Johns have expressed their dissatisfaction with the status quo, and the need for change in national leadership.”
“I am grateful and humbled to have the support of patriots and look forward to working with them to earn the vote of the constituents in Florida’s 5th Congressional District.”
Macie has campaigned as a conservative outsider, a stark contrast to Rutherford, one of the 25 intransigent Republicans who voted with Democrats to block Rep. Jim Jordan (R-FL), the Republican Conference nominee, in the vote for speaker on the House floor in October 2023.
Rutherford cast a vote in opposition to Jordan three times.
In a bizarre interview on the Mark Kaye Show, Rutherford offered a series of evolving and contradictory justifications for blocking the conservative hero from the speakership, including to teach Jordan a lesson and hold him accountable for his character flaws alleged by Rutherford.
Rutherford’s votes were consistent with his record as an establishment, moderate Republican. He is a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership, an organization which raises funds to support moderate Republicans.
Prominent members of the group include Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) — who voted to impeach Trump in his Senate trial, and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) — who worked with the Biden administration to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) without key reforms sought by Jordan and other conservatives as well as a large block of Democrats wary of a weaponized federal government.
Rutherford is also a member of the House Ethics Committee, a hotbed of establishment politicians which made news this Congress for violating decades of Congressional precedent to oust self-proclaimed MAGA Republican Rep. George Santos (R-NY).
The committee issued a report clearing the way for a House vote on Santos’s expulsion, despite his criminal trials not yet adjudicated and Santos’s claims of innocence. Ethics Committee precedence dictated that investigations into members accused of crimes do not begin until a member is found guilty.
Santos still has not been found guilty of a crime.
The loss of Santos’s reliable conservative vote further crippled the slim House Republican majority. The special election to replace Santos was won by a Democrat.
In an action sparking widespread claims of hypocrisy (or worse), the committee refused to pursue actions against Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) who pleaded guilty to committing a crime by pulling a Capitol complex fire alarm allegedly to stop a House vote on government funding.
Several high-profile measures were defeated by a single vote after Santos’s expulsion, including the impeachment of Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and an amendment to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to require intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant before spying on American citizens.
Rutherford voted against the warrantless surveillance amendment in what proved to be the deciding vote.
“That was one vote from failing and if I had been elected to office [in 2022] that would not have gone through,” Macie told Breitbart News Sunday this month. “I mean, we really need to take a look at this, who is going to represent the constituents and the American people.”
Macie attacked other aspects of Rutherford’s record in that interview.
“John Rutherford consistently votes the wrong way,” she said. “He votes for the continuing resolutions which fund DEI and trans surgeries and travel for abortion for DOD and things like that,” she told host Matt Boyle. “I mean, the man is not actually backing conservative values.”
The conservative St. Johns County Executive Committee endorsed Donald Trump for president several months ago.
The Florida Republican primary takes place August 20.
Bradley Jaye is a Capitol Hill Correspondent for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter at @BradleyAJaye.
