7 February 12-18, 2026 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | to help satisfy a $229,000 judgment to his previous employer. Fishback, who claims he doesn’t have the means to pay the judgment, spent $37,000 on a previously undisclosed debit card between March 2024 and July 2025, according to the order. But what he lacks in funds, he apparently makes up for in taste, as the suit lists items purchased from retailers like Nordstrom, Burberry, Brunello Cucinelli, Tom Ford, and Swiss luxury watch retailer Bucherer. “I am not paying my billionaire boss a penny,” Fishback says of the judgment. “He owes me millions of dollars in compensation, and I am not going to pay him a penny just be- cause some Democrat judge in New York who has sided against President Trump time and again says that I owe him his attorney’s fees.” “I recognize that billionaires will always wage lawsuits, frivolous lawsuits, against working class folks, folks under the guise of noncompete agreements to hurt and to hold down working class people all over my state,” he says, claiming that the suit amounted to Einhorn being upset that Fish- back left Green- light to start his own firm, Azoria Capital. Fishback’s references to the working class reflect his fix- ation on affordability. When New Times noted parallels with New York Governor Zohran Mamdani — both in message and in his outreach to Gen Z supporters — Fishback quickly moved to distance himself from the democratic socialist. “Perhaps the only thing that Zohran and I agree on is that the number one issue affect- ing Americans today is affordability,” he says. “Now he and I are going to take different routes to that destination, but I think if he’s successful in New York, and if I’m successful in Florida, we will have proven that afford- ability is the number one concern.” Political Playbook Buckle in, because this gets a little insider. Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’ press secretary, advised Fishback “for two months,” accord- ing to a lengthy post on X. In mid-January, Pushaw wrote that she offered Fishback ad- vice on his campaign, unbeknownst to De- Santis, but was “never working for him” and “never received any form of compensation.” But their professional relationship quickly soured, she says, as she “disagreed with his campaign rhetoric increasingly over time as it became more extreme” and learned “that he had behaved inappropriately with minors in his Incubate Debate league.” “I was recently informed of allegations in- volving additional minors,” she wrote. Things devolved further after that, with Pushaw describing Fishback as “becoming paranoid and delusional,” saying that he er- roneously claimed the two were romantically involved, and that she “told him that he would be more likely to go to prison than the governor’s mansion if he kept up his pattern of deception and fraud.” Pushaw also apologized to DeSantis and the first lady of Florida, Casey DeSantis, for her communication with the candidate. “I am afraid of James Fishback. I believe he is a vindictive, dishonest, and fundamentally selfish actor who is using this gubernatorial campaign to distract from his significant fi- nancial and legal problems. I am terrified that he will weaponize his platform against me to destroy me for my ‘crime’ of getting angry at him and cutting off contact,” she wrote. Politicos accused Pushaw of working with Fishback to split the vote against Don- alds, a candidate DeSantis is reportedly not fond of. Fishback, for his part, told reporters in Tallahassee on January 22 that “I can affir- matively, definitely and unequivocally tell you that Christina Pushaw never held me at gunpoint and told me to run for governor.” He was a bit more forthcoming about his relationship with Pushaw during his talk with New Times. “Christina Pushaw was someone that I spoke to a couple times a week. She gave me advice. Half of it was good, half of it was horrible, and then she decided to crash out after I wouldn’t drop out and en- dorse Jay Collins,” he says. “That is the begin- ning, the middle, and the end of the story. I wish her all the best.” Then, there are the polling numbers. A January 13 Mason-Dixon poll found that, if the Florida Republican primary were held to- day, 37 percent of voters would go for Don- alds, while just 3 percent would vote for Fishback (Jay Collins pulled in seven percent of the hypothetical votes, while Paul Renner got four percent). But Fishback’s camp begs to differ. He recently posted a poll on X from Patriot Polling predicting Donalds with 37 percent of the vote at the August primary and himself with 23 percent. It’s unclear why its results differ so sharply from those of other polls, but worth noting that the “nonpartisan organization” is run by college students and was founded while its principals were still in high school. Its CEO, Lucca Ruggieri, appears to be a freshman at Columbia University and has previously worked as a campaign manager for a Republi- can congressional campaign. (For the most serious wagerers, Polymar- ket, as of this reporting, has Fishback at a solid 18 percent to win the Republican primary, trailing far behind Donalds’ 78 percent.) His frenzied campaign has drawn praise from white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes (though Fishback said he didn’t want his en- dorsement, since Fuentes is not a Florida res- ident) and from Tucker Carlson, who did not dispute Fishback’s false assertion that Florida college students could be expelled for criti- cizing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ne- tanyahu. “Well, you’ve got my vote,” Carlson said on his podcast, The Tucker Carlson Show. Fishback seems determined to defy easy classification. Whether his antics and grow- ing profile can actually win him the gover- nor’s seat is anyone’s guess. “I have plenty of criticisms for the Demo- crat party, but I’ve also got plenty for the Re- publican Party,” he says. “The Republican Party has sold out working class voters time and again, and I’m running as a Republican not because I agree with the Republican Party, but because I believe the Republican Party can, once again, be a coalition of work- ing class folks that fight for the dignity of ev- ery worker, every family, and every senior in our state.” MARCO RUBIO BY ALEX DELUCA Marco Rubio is collecting job titles like Infinity Stones. A former Republican senator from Flor- ida, Rubio is now serving as the country’s sec- retary of state, interim national security advisor, and acting archivist. Depending on who you ask, he’s also got his hands full as the Trump administration’s official Font Czar, Air Force One’s resident mummy, Vice Presi- dent JD Vance’s BFF, and — as the internet has relentlessly trolled — the new manager of Manchester United, the prime minister of Greenland, and the new Michelin Man. But beneath the memes and ever-growing list of job titles is a more serious reality: the 54-year-old Cuban-American from Miami has emerged as a key figure in President Donald Trump’s second term and one of the most pow- erful and influential figures in Washington. Rubio did not respond to New Times’ re- quests for comment. A constant figure in right-wing politics who earned a zero out of 100 on the Human Rights Campaign’s Congressional Score- card in 2022 thanks to his stalwart anti-LG- BTQ and anti-choice voting record, Rubio served for nearly a decade as a Republican state legislator before being elected to U.S. Congress in 2010. And despite his history of being relentlessly mocked by Trump (you may recall “little Marco”), the president nom- inated Rubio for Secretary of State in Novem- ber 2024, and the Senate confirmed him shortly after in January 2025. Since being hand-chosen by Trump as the 72nd United States Secretary of State, Rubio has been thrust into the center of foreign cri- ses across the globe in places like Venezuela, Iran, and Ukraine. He notably played a key role in the U.S. military’s stunning capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, a long- time ally of Cuba. Following Maduro’s cap- ture, Trump said that Rubio would help “run” Venezuela through the resulting upheaval. For Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants whose anti-communist worldview was forged amid Miami’s Cuban-exile politics, the campaign against Maduro hasn’t just been about Venezuela – it’s been described as a strategic stepping-stone toward Rubio’s long- held belief that regime change in Venezuela could eventually lead to the collapse of the Castro regime in Havana. “He has always been – and I think this is the right word – obsessed with Cuba and bringing down the regime there,” Ernesto Castañeda, the director of Latin American studies at American University, told the Guardian. “That explains his worldview. That’s how he got elected many times in Florida, and now he’s espousing that policy in the White House.” Rubio has suggested that weakening Mad- uro’s government could strip Cuba of eco- nomic and intelligence support, creating conditions for political upheaval on the Ca- ribbean island. In a press conference held just one day after Maduro’s capture, Rubio warned that Cuba’s government could be the administration’s next target. “If I lived in Havana and I was in the gov- ernment,” Rubio said, “I’d be concerned.” Days later, after Trump vowed to force Venezuela to cut off Cuba’s oil lifeline, the president quipped that Rubio might soon have a new job to add to his laundry list of ti- tles: President of Cuba. “Sounds good to me,” Trump replied to a so- cial media post that jokingly suggested the idea. [email protected] Photo by U.S. Embassy Jerusalem/Flickr Marco Rubio wears an assortment of hats these days. P E O P L E TO W ATC H 2026
