Florida Politics54%
James Fishback’s eligibility for Governor’s race hangs in balance as Judge eyes Monday ruling 17%
By Jesse Scheckner25%
7/22/2026, 12:10:12 AM
BS Summary: This article contains 25 faulty reasoning types, including Self-Serving Bias, Ad Hominem, and Red Herring, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 22.4% saturation with 329 hits. Analysis detected 1,510 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,469 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 33.2% and a BS Rank of 17% (16,176 of 19,443 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 83.20% of the article peer group.
Testimony, presentation of evidence, questioning and oral arguments in an ongoing court dispute over Republican James Fishback’s eligibility to run for Governor this year began and ended Tuesday, when the presiding Judge said he intends to deliver his ruling in less than a week.
After a day-long hearing, streamed online by WCTV Eyewitness News, lawyers for the plaintiff and defendant said they were satisfied with the time allotted to the issue, which was one day shorter than originally scheduled .
Judge David Frank of the 2nd Judicial Circuit in Leon County asked the parties to deliver their respective proposed orders by 5 p.m.
Friday.
He said he plans to make a final decision by Monday, calling the case’s expedited pace “a fire sale timeline.”
The case centers on whether Fishback, 31, meets the Florida Constitution’s seven-year residency requirement for gubernatorial candidates.
It comes more than seven months after Florida Politics reported that Fishback had been registered to vote in both Florida and Washington, D.C., where he voted in 2020 and subsequently purchased a condominium on which he received a homestead exemption.
Last month, Lt.
Gov.
Jay Collins filed a lawsuit against Fishback and Secretary of State Cord Byrd , in his capacity as overseer of the state Division of Elections, alleging Fishback doesn’t meet the residency requirement and lied on his candidate oath form.
Byrd’s Office, represented by lawyer Ashley Davis , deferred largely to the court Tuesday.
Collins’ team, led Tuesday by lawyer Mark Meuser , entered 38 exhibits into evidence, including voter records, mortgage paperwork and tax filings, which lawyer Nick Boerke said show Fishback’s “domicile in D.C. and voting history there,” among other things.
Fishback’s team, led by former state Rep.
Anthony Sabatini , a lawyer and current Lake County Commissioner, raised no objections to them and countered with its own 70 exhibits , almost all of which covered timeframes after 2022, when Fishback bought a Florida home in Madison County.
Collins’ team also called two witnesses to bolster the strength of its evidence.
The first was Mark McLaughlin , a political and elections researcher who testified that Fishback voted in D.C.’s Nov. 3, 2020, election and took out a mortgage that year to buy his condo there.
McLaughlin cited a deed of trust for the property requiring Fishback to occupy the home as his principal residence for at least one year and a homestead exemption for which applicants “should” obtain a D.C. voter registration, driver’s license, vehicle registration or income tax filing.
He also pointed to a corrected 2026 tax bill showing Fishback owed back taxes after the exemption was revoked.
Under cross-examination, McLaughlin acknowledged being paid by Collins’ campaign and said that while he never witnessed Fishback sign anything, the documents were notarized.
Thomas Vastrick , a seasoned forensic document examiner, then testified with “high confidence” that Fishback’s signature appeared on his D.C. voter registration form, calling it “probable” the documents were written by the same person.
Collins’ legal team then rested, after which Sabatini called Fishback as the defense’s first witness.
Fishback testified for hours, describing being born and growing up in Broward County, launching his first investment firm, Macrovoyant Partners, and living with his ailing grandmother in Plantation from 2019 to 2022, two years before she passed away.
He said he bought the D.C. condo, located a block from where his parents live, both as an investment and as a place where he could stay apart from their one-bedroom home and host them for dinner from time to time.
But Fishback said he didn’t furnish the condominium until 2024, two years after he’d bought the Madison property and essentially turned the condo into a stopover place for family members and friends.
He testified to spending fewer than 15 days there in 2022, never working in D.C. and denied ever considering himself a resident there.
In 2020, he said, he voted in the General Election in D.C. after returning from a foreign trip during COVID-19 lockdowns, after which he decided not to risk exposing his grandmother by returning to Florida.
He said he used his Florida ID at a polling place in D.C., where he used his Florida ID to receive a ballot and only vote in the presidential race, leaving his D.C. registration listed with no party affiliation, since he’d never picked one because he didn’t realize he was registering to vote there.
Fishback also pointed to electric bills for the property, which showed usage roughly one-tenth that of a typical condo, which he said further proved he did not live in D.C. for any considerable stretch of time.
But notably, the records he provided from utility Pepco covered only 2023 onward.
He said he wasn’t able to get bills earlier than that.
Other evidence Fishback provided included SunPass records for the same year and after and a filing from ex-fiancée Keinah Fort’s dismissed injunction petition against him, which listed his address in Florida.
Under cross-examination by Meuser, Fishback was shown a video of a press conference he held three weeks ago, shortly after Collins filed suit, in which he denied voting in D.C. in 2020, suggesting it may have been someone else with his name — an explanation he walked back Tuesday, when he admitted, under oath, to casting a D.C. ballot six years ago.
Fishback said Tuesday that he’d only been asked whether he had an active D.C. registration, which isn’t true; he was asked whether he voted in D.C. and had a homestead exemption there, as Collins’ complaint contends.
In another exchange, Meuser showed Fishback a screenshot of an online Incubate Debate event U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch attended that Fishback participated in from his grandmother’s living room, which Fishback called “exculpatory” despite postdating his 2020 vote by two years and occurring during the timeframe he was buying his Madison County home.
Meuser also raised a 2020 filing listing Macrovoyant’s address as being in D.C. and tax documents between 2019 and 2022 listing the same.
Fishback said Denver-based accountant Taylor McIlvennan had prepared the tax forms without his signature and that a later form for Incubate Debate — the same underlying company as Macrovoyant — was updated to his Madison County address.
During the cross-examination, Fishback frequently smirked at Meuser’s questions, refused to answer a query about a letter addressed to him but listing another person’s name in the salutatory line and chastised Meuser for suggesting he could have returned to Florida from D.C. as early as September 2020 after Gov.
Ron DeSantis lifted most COVID-related lockdowns.
Other testimony came from Fishback’s father, James Fishback Sr. , and campaign treasurer James Munguia , a former Chief Strategy Officer for Fishback’s failed investment firm , Azoria Capital.
Both attested that Fishback never permanently resided in D.C. or expressed interest in leaving Florida, except when he attended Georgetown University from 2013 to 2015.
Born in Davie, Fishback launched his GOP bid for Governor in November 2025 on a nativist, “Florida First” platform built around ending H-1B visas and halting AI data center construction.
He has consistently polled far behind GOP front-runner U.S.
Rep.
Byron Donalds , with Collins in third place and former House Speaker Paul Renner in fourth.
Fishback’s campaign rhetoric has repeatedly drawn condemnation.
He has called Donalds, who is Black, a “slave” to donors and corporate interests , a “DEI Republican” and “By’rone,” prompting Attorney General James Uthmeier to call the remarks “ gross .”
When pressed, Fishback argued Donalds had no standing to be offended since Donalds isn’t a descendant of American slaves.
Fishback has also appeared on a podcast alongside self-described admirers of Adolf Hitler and drew scrutiny after a political committee tied to his campaign sent supporters a text depicting Fishback in gun sights , suggesting rivals wanted him “stopped at all costs.”
Fishback also faces steep financial difficulties following his split from New York-headquartered hedge fund Greenlight Capital, where he worked from 2021 to 2023.
A federal magistrate ordered him to turn over Azoria stock and luxury purchases toward a $229,000 judgment.
A separate Judge later ordered him to pay Greenlight $1.2 million in legal fees , and Fishback’s lawyers have moved to withdraw more than $150,000 in unpaid bills .
Court filings later revealed Fishback, with Munguia’s assistance, directed the use of fake accounts to plant tips and inflate his media coverage.
On the Democratic side of the Governor’s race, former U.S.
Rep.
David Jolly is widely believed to be a lock for his party’s nomination.
The Primary is Aug. 18, followed by the General Election on Nov.
3.
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