On a muggy afternoon in late July, roughly 200 right-wing activists gathered at a Venice country club to plot a course of action.
Despite Donald Trump winning the presidency for a second time, an entrenched and corrupt elite had — in their telling — managed to hold onto power in the Sunshine State.
Over plates of catered barbecue chicken and sauteed vegetables, the activists — some hailing from far-right Republican clubs, some from anti-vaccine organizations and others seeking to draw Christian clergy into conservative politics — focused their ire on their own party.
“How’s it possible that we can have the most popular Republican president in our lifetime, but still have so many RINOs in our party?” Cathi Chamberlain, an activist with the group Pinellas Watchdogs, asked the crowd, using the term — short for “Republican in name only” — to describe members viewed as disloyal to the party's core values.
“We don’t just have RINOs in Washington, D.C.,” she said. “We have them in our own backyard, right here in Florida.”
The meeting, organized by the activist group Defend Florida, was billed as both a rally and strategy session — a place where grassroots conservatives could learn how to coordinate campaigns to oust establishment Republicans from local government and party leadership roles. It also spotlighted a growing rift within the Florida GOP, between far-right rank-and-file activists and some party leaders.
With Trump back in the White House, that MAGA faction has doubled down on efforts to remake the party in its 0image — not by challenging Democrats but by targeting their own. Through meetings like this one, they’re mapping out how to purge establishment Republicans from local power and install ideologically aligned candidates in their place.
Defend Florida, which the group’s leader, Raj Doraisamy, describes as “a website and a movement,” has worked with figures like Michael Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general turned election denial figurehead, and Roger Stone, a longtime political operative known for his cutthroat style. The group also helped lay the groundwork for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ controversial Office of Election Crimes and Security.
Its influence has drawn backlash from GOP leadership. In an email to local party leaders ahead of the event, Bill Helmich, executive director of the Republican Party of Florida, warned that Defend Florida posed “a matter of growing concern that directly impacts the unity and integrity of our organization,” and urged members to distance themselves from the group.
But that warning didn’t seem to carry much weight in Venice, where attendees jeered at any mention of the party’s official leadership and cheered calls to remove them.
Speakers blasted RINOs as traitors to the conservative cause. Others warned that moderates were sabotaging the party from within. The call to action was clear: take over local Republican executive committees, run for obscure party offices and mobilize behind hard-line candidates who would carry their agenda deeper into Florida’s political machinery.
“During the French Revolution, they turned on themselves and guillotined their own,” said Aubrey Jewett, a professor of political science at the University of Central Florida who closely follows Florida electoral politics. “There is a bit of that same scenario that seems to be happening in Florida.”
Florida far-right takes aim at local politics
After President Joe Biden was elected in 2020, a rift grew within the Republican Party. One faction insisted that Democrats had stolen the election and demanded audits and lawsuits to overturn the outcome, even years into Biden’s term. The other, made up of more traditional conservatives and longtime party officials, rejected those claims as baseless or avoided the issue and tried to move on.
The divide played out in places like Manatee County, where Trump-aligned activists clashed with local Republican leaders and election workers who defended the integrity of the vote and dismissed claims of widespread fraud.
Others in the local MAGA movement sought to push local institutions farther to the right, with Proud Boys militia members and groups like Moms for Liberty, which has promoted book removals and sought to remove LGBTQ+ topics from school curricula, backing successful school board races in Sarasota.
When Trump was reelected in November, many of the national groups that had spent years promoting the president’s claims of a stolen election went silent.
But at the Defend Florida meeting, which was billed as a training for grassroots activists, doubts about election security and deep cynicism about their own party’s leadership persisted.
Meeting-goers participated in sessions focused on fundraising, “group growth” and how to stage campaigns to oust establishment Republicans from local office and local party leadership. State Rep. Berny Jacques, of Pinellas County, delivered a keynote decrying the country’s elections as corrupt and urging attendees to double down on the issue of election administration.
“We’re requesting that you be the light of the world,” said Doraisamy, whose Defend Florida has long promoted disproven claims of widespread voter fraud and which led the July 26 event.
“We’re encouraging you to make vigorous use of this blueprint,” Doraisamy added, holding up a copy of the day’s agenda, which featured a worksheet for participants to fill out on topics like choosing candidates, fundraising and public relations.
Establishment GOP draws boos, jeers
The day’s programming was, at a glance, scattershot and seemingly intended to appeal to broad sections of the movement. Attendees first watched a video recorded by a consultant who opposes wind and solar energy. They then heard a speech from Susan Sweetin, an activist associated with a prominent anti-vaccine group who spoke emotionally about her son’s health problems that she attributes to an immunization.
Underpinning the day was a central theme:. Plug in locally. Be strategic. Oust party leaders who waver in their support for far-right causes.
Chamberlain, from the Pinellas Watchdogs group, pulled up a flow chart illustrating the levels of leadership within the national and statewide Republican Party. When she mentioned the Republican Party of Florida, the room broke out in jeers.
“I can see I’m talking to the right crowd,” she joked.
During breakout sessions, participants clustered around speakers who offered advice on topics like campaign finance and crowdfunding.
“The whole concept from the conference was to find candidates, train them and find money to allow them to run for office without influences from big developers or others,” said Jeffrey Carmen, who sits on the board of Manatee Patriots and knows what it’s like to enjoy an upset victory.
Propelled by widespread and bipartisan anger over new developments eroding wetlands in the flood prone Suncoast region, a slate of Republican candidates that Patriot activists backed earned seats on the Manatee County Commission in 2024, besting their developer-friendly opponents.
The commission, which in June voted not to approve a major building project in flood-prone Parrish, now finds itself at odds with Tallahassee Republicans, who passed a law June 27 broadly restricting local governments’ ability to regulate development in storm-impacted areas.
Meanwhile, activists in the state who threw their efforts behind candidates that focused heavily on election-related conspiracy theories have seen less success. Only two candidates out of a slate of 13 who sought to take over election oversight positions across the state succeeded in 2024 races.
Despite those losses, organizers with Defend Florida — which has long elevated election fraud claims — found a receptive audience for that message during the July event.
“Locally, we need to fix the voter registration and voter rolls, because we don't want elections to be rigged like they have been for decades,” said Nina Aldridge, a Manatee resident who said this was her first time participating in an activist gathering.
In contrast with the event’s grassroots theme, a host of influential and well-funded right-wing charities also had a presence in the room, peppering rank-and-file activists with slick pamphlets and promotional literature urging them to get onboard.
Citizens Defending Freedom, a national group based in Mulberry, which advocates for “the body of Christ to influence culture and governance” handed out QR codes to enlist participants in “Biblical Citizenship” classes promoting the idea that America ought to be a Christian nation.
Citizens for Renewing America, the advocacy arm of a group founded by Project 2025 architect and current Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, handed out dense guides to getting involved in local politics, urging readers to seek out “your local America First, MAGA group, conservative club or Tea Party organization” and identify key sources of local political influence.
All of this together, Doraisamy explained in an interview with Suncoast Searchlight, makes up an effort to prepare for a post-Trump America.
“Dynamics will change after his term ends. Dynamics will change — what he's got going on ... at the national level, that will sustain only if we can get stuff done at the local level,” Doraisamy said.
“This country is bottom up — that’s how I see it.”
This story was produced by Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative serving Sarasota, Manatee, and DeSoto counties. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org.
