Inside Club for Growth's $1m "Anybody but Collins" strategy in Florida
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The conservative Club for Growth is wading into Florida's wildest GOP primary with a massive $1.1 million ad buy to crush one of its biggest foes: former Rep. Chris Collins.
Why it matters: It's the club's own ABC strategy: "Anybody but Chris."
- In a conservative U.S. House district with 10 Republican candidates, including two former members of Congress from other states, the ads won't guarantee that Collins goes down in the Aug. 18 primary.
- But they certainly will make his return to Congress much more challenging.
Zoom in: The 30-second club ad is scheduled to run on broadcast, Fox News, satellite and streaming services, starting Tuesday, saturating the airwaves in the primary's final three weeks.
- Collins once represented a New York congressional district but resigned his seat in 2019 after his federal conviction for insider trading. President Trump pardoned him in 2020, and he relocated to Southwest Florida.
- Collins, who was the first Republican to advertise on TV in the race, touts his record on immigration.
- But the new ad from the club's Win It Back PAC is taking direct aim at that message, accusing him of being too soft on illegal immigration.
Zoom out: The club has a long memory.
- Collins ran afoul of the Club for Growth when he served in Congress, earning a low rating on its scorecard for votes that it considered insufficiently conservative.
- "He is a 49% on our scorecard, the bottom of the barrel in terms of ideology," a club operative told Axios.
Go deeper: State legislators redrew Florida's 19th House District this year. It's being vacated by Rep. Byron Donalds, the odds-on favorite to win Florida's Republican gubernatorial primary.
- Former lawmaker Madison Cawthorn, who represented a North Carolina U.S. House district, is also running in the carpetbagger primary to succeed Donalds.
- Other candidates in the Fort Myers-based district are Greg "Tex" Bukowski, Ola Hawatmeh, Catalina Lauf, Jim Oberweis, Mike Pedersen, Linda J. Sawyer, Jim Schwartzel and John Strand.
