Former Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback says he was barred from a Clearwater Get Out the Vote rally and threatened with arrest, claims Rep. Byron Donalds’s campaign calls a lie.
Fishback, a Republican who previously lost a Florida governor bid to Donalds, said he and his wife tried to enter the Saturday rally in Clearwater and were told he was “not welcome here.”
Rep. Anna Paulina Luna hosted the event. Donalds and Sen. Ashley Moody were listed as special guests. Fishback pinned the exclusion on Donalds and said the congressman would threaten to arrest them for showing up at a political event open to the public. The Hill reported the clash after local coverage of his account.
Gates McGavick, who handles communications for Donalds’s campaign, rejected that charge on social media the same day.
"This is a lie. It wasn’t even Byron’s event. He did not kick anyone out, much less threaten anyone with arrest,"
McGavick wrote.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office gave CBS 12 a different picture than Fishback’s arrest claim. Luna’s staff advised detectives that Fishback was not welcome. Detectives did not threaten him with arrest, the office said.
No arrest was reported. No charges were described. The dispute stayed at the door.
Fishback framed the episode as a break from every other high-profile political event he had attended.
"I have attended political events featuring Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bernie Sanders, and I’ve never had any issues. It is disgraceful that Byron Donalds would threaten to arrest us for attending a political event open to the public,"
he said.
Donalds’s team says that threat never happened and that the rally was not even Donalds’s event to run. The sheriff’s readout puts the “not welcome” call with Luna’s staff, not with a Donalds arrest order.
Fishback and Donalds already had a primary history. Fishback lost his gubernatorial bid to Donalds. That loss does not settle who controlled the Clearwater door on Saturday. It does explain why a blocked entry turned into a public charge against a fellow Republican.
Fishback has drawn other controversy in the recent cycle. He said earlier this year his campaign was banned from Waffle House restaurants across Florida after he announced plans to visit every location in the state. He has also faced prior criticism over alleged inappropriate behavior and racist comments. Those threads are separate from the sheriff’s account of the rally. They do show a candidate already used to operating under dispute.
The rally itself was a standard Get Out the Vote gathering for Florida Republicans, with Luna as host and Donalds and Moody as featured names. Venue details beyond Clearwater were not laid out in the coverage. Who personally spoke the words “not welcome here” was not named. What is on the record is the clash of claims: Fishback’s arrest threat story, the campaign’s flat denial, and the sheriff’s statement that Luna’s staff flagged him and that detectives made no arrest threat.
Party events are not open microphones for every past rival. Hosts set terms. Law enforcement on scene answers to the facts in front of them, not to a candidate’s press line. Fishback wanted a public humiliation story about Donalds. The campaign answer and the sheriff’s readout both cut against the arrest claim he put at the center.
Voters can judge a blocked door. They should also judge which version matches the people who were actually there.
