As Republicans sift through the wreckage of a devastating election night that handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress by large margins, one Florida Republican who bucked the national trend says the GOP fundamentally misread the electorate. In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Congressman Randy Fine — who expanded his own winning margin by five points despite the national backlash — offered a candid assessment of his party's shortcomings and warned that Republicans must now prepare for an "ugly two years" battling Democrats over immigration and other contentious issues. While Republicans held their ground in Florida, winning the governor's mansion, the Senate race, and maintaining their 20-8 edge in the US House, nationally the GOP got crushed under the weight of a blue tsunami.
ILHAN OMAR HIT WITH EXPULSION THREAT AS GOP LAWMAKER VOWS TO BOOT HER FROM CONGRESS OVER DOJ PROBE Congressman Fine presents no easy answer to the GOP's divergence in fortunes between Florida and the rest of the country: "You know, I think that's a hard question to answer. What I would say, I can speak to my race, and I'm actually one of the few Republicans in the country whose margin increased from my last election. I won my special election after having $14 million spent against me.
I won last night by 19 points. And so what I can tell you is what worked for me. "My constituents want a fighter, someone who says what they believe.
They know it's not driven by polls or anything else and fights for them, whether it's fighting for their constituent service issue or fighting on illegal immigration or fighting to bring money to the district. And that's why I went up so much. I took my race seriously because I knew the winds were against us.
"And so, Florida, I think just people know how good we have it and they don't want to screw up the state. I think that's why we won all 20 of these races." Fine refuses to single out anyone in GOP leadership for the electoral outcome, and believes the Republicans must approach each election cycle as a unified team: "Well, look, I'm not a finger pointer, but what I would say is this. We're a team and the team lost.
And so then the whole team bears responsibility and that includes me. I mean, while I did well, my team lost, and I'm not going to be here pointing the fingers at anybody. FROM CAMPUS RADICALS TO BEIJING'S AI SABOTAGE: REP RANDY FINE SAYS 'US FIGHTING TO SAVE WESTERN CIVILIZATION' "I think that what we did is we failed to understand what the American people wanted.
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