A new political ad on Florida airwaves is targeting Rep. Matt Gaetz over his ties to a convicted sex offender.
The ad — a boon for the Florida Republican’s primary challenger, Aaron Dimmock — might just be the latest chess move in Kevin McCarthy’s revenge tour, which has sought to oust the GOP lawmakers who voted to remove him as House speaker last year. The spot is funded by an organization called Florida Patriots PAC, which bears resemblance to similarly named PACs that were used to target other McCarthy foes during primary races in South Carolina and Virginia.
The revenge tour sputtered out of the gate last month, as McCarthy’s pick in South Carolina failed to oust Rep. Nancy Mace in her primary.
The revenge tour sputtered out of the gate last month, as McCarthy’s pick in South Carolina failed to oust Rep. Nancy Mace in her primary. And in Virginia, a McCarthy-backed candidate is leading Rep. Bob Good in his primary, but only after former President Donald Trump bashed Good and also endorsed the challenger.
Gaetz won his primary comfortably in 2022, so ousting him seems like an uphill climb. But the ad targeting him (which you can watch here) is cutting, without question. It highlights Gaetz’s “close friendship” with Joel Greenberg, a former Florida tax official who pleaded guilty to several federal charges in 2021, including child sex trafficking. Gaetz once referred to Greenberg as his “wingman.”
Greenberg cooperated with a federal sex trafficking probe into Gaetz that ultimately resulted in no charges being brought against the House Republican.
Greenberg reportedly has cooperated with the House Ethics Committee’s probe into Gaetz as well. Two weeks ago, the committee said in a news release that it was reviewing allegations that the Florida representative may have “engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use, accepted improper gifts, dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.”
McCarthy has argued that Gaetz fueled the effort to oust him after the then-speaker declined to interfere in the ethics probe.
McCarthy has argued that Gaetz fueled the effort to oust him after the then-speaker declined to interfere in the ethics probe. During an event at Georgetown University in April, McCarthy claimed that he was no longer speaker because “one person, a member of Congress, wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old, an ethics complaint that started before I ever became speaker. And that’s illegal, and I’m not going to get in the middle. Did he do it or not? I don’t know.”
It was a clear reference to Gaetz, who has denied the allegation and any wrongdoing. And now this new ad is continuing to hit him on the same front.