On April 30th, the Florida Department of State sent a letter to all State Representatives to vote on whether or not they wanted to have a special legislative session to address 3 topics; proposals for unemployment, medicaid expansion, and the upcoming elections.
Representative Randy Fine has been very active on social media since the last legislative session reposting information from other websites to his Facebook page and running political ads to build his following on social media. Fine has been very critical of the unemployment systems’ failures, and has offered printed paper copies for constituents to fill out to apply for unemployment if they were unable to do so online.
Fine has also set up weekly food drives with the 501c3 Farm Share to provide food to families in need. Many recipients of the food from these food drives have expressed frustration with what has been provided. The drive from last weekend included bottles of sparkling water, dozens of loaves of bread, and some random individual snacks. The week prior, each box included pounds of okra.
Once they filled out a form, providing their contact information for Representative Fine, residents received their box of food along with a letter from Fine thanking them and reminding them that he is fighting for them and he is providing this food drive. He Facebook lives the event showing the individuals who showed up for school and also wearing his campaign attire. He uses the charity provided food drive to campaign for his reelection, and using the resources of his state funded office. All of these acts are in violation of state law.
