Newly elected Rep. Randy Fine’s top priority is passing Trump’s agenda

While campaigning for his new role in Congress, Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.), who won a special election on April 1, wrote on social media that “the ‘Hebrew hammer’ is coming” and anti-Israel Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) “might consider leaving before I get there. Bombs away.”

JNS asked Fine, who is Jewish, what he will say to Omar and Tlaib when he inevitably crosses paths with them in the Capitol.

“I don’t talk to terrorists,” he said.

Nicknamed the Hebrew Hammer by a fellow Florida state senator, Fine has been in perpetual campaign mode, appearing on election ballots five times in the last nine months, including primary, general, special and state committee elections.

That includes a jump from the Florida state House to the state Senate to the U.S. House in a mere six months.

He won a closer-than-expected race to fill the vacant 6th Congressional District seat in the Sunshine State, which Mike Waltz vacated to become U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security advisor.

“The last three-and-a-half weeks have just been insane. No one cared about our race, and then everyone cared about our race,” Fine, 50, told JNS of nationwide attention centered on the special election, in which he beat former teacher Joshua Weil by 14 points.

The razor-thin Republican majority in the House means every special election holds significant weight.

“My first priority is to make sure President Trump’s agenda gets passed,” Fine told JNS. “I was pleased to see that my being elected allowed the big, beautiful reconciliation bill to be passed this week.”

The House budget resolution, meant to lay the groundwork for Trump’s agenda, passed last week by a 216-214 margin.

“If I had lost, it would have failed,” Fine told JNS.

Beyond supporting Trump, Fine’s priorities are the U.S.-Israel relationship and fighting Jew-hatred. He told JNS that no member of Congress will take a harder line than he on antisemitism.

“That’s certainly not something I’m afraid to talk about,” he said. “It’s what I’m most known for from my time in Florida.”

Fine has been assigned to the House Education and the Workforce Committee, which has played a central role in exposing and combating Jew-hatred at U.S. educational institutions.

The committee is slated to hold a campus Jew-hatred hearing on May 7.

Fine’s battle against antisemitism led to the deterioration of his relationship with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, over what Fine said was the governor’s reluctance to tackle Jew-hatred coming from Neo-Nazis and others on the right. (The governor’s supporters maintain that he is a fierce defender of Israel and Jews.)

“Florida is the best place in America to be Jewish,” Fine told JNS. “It is the safest place. It is the most welcoming place, and it is that because of me.”

Fine pushed two antisemitism-related bills that DeSantis signed into law in June 2024.

“Doing that was not easy. Getting those bills to be heard was not easy,” he said. “Getting Gov. DeSantis to sign those bills was not easy. Getting him to enforce those bills was not easy.”

“I was able to overcome it in Florida, and I hope to be able to do it in Washington as well,” he told JNS.

Fine hopes to be assigned to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he can have a greater impact on U.S.-Israel relations, he told JNS.

In the immediate term, he is putting a functioning office together after a whirlwind campaign.

He not only took office three months after the rest of the first-term class in Congress, but he also didn’t get the typical two-month period, between November and January, to prepare for his term.

“I’m really five months behind the apple cart,” Fine told JNS.

He is the fourth Jewish Republican member of the House this term, joining Rep. Craig Goldman (R-Texas), a fellow freshman, and Reps. Max Miller (R-Ohio) and David Kustoff (R-Tenn.).

Fine told JNS that he has gotten to know Miller over the years at Republican Jewish Coalition events and is getting to know Kustoff.

The new Florida congressman’s office, in which he affixed a mezuzah to the front door, is beside that of Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.), who is also Jewish.

“He was a great friend of mine when we were in the Florida legislature together,” Fine said.

He told JNS that he doesn’t know many Jewish House Democrats, having met Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), who has served in Congress for more than 20 years, for the first time last week at a Florida congressional delegation meeting.

“I don’t know that I know the Jewish Democrats,” Fine told JNS. “I have enough to do getting to know 219 other Republicans.”

© JNS