VoxPopuli: Peter, this seems like a very unique PAC. To your knowledge, is this the first time a PAC has been established to target one specific individual to keep them from office?

Peter Schorsch: In politics, there’s nothing new under the sun. There’s always going to be PACs that are set up to oppose people. I’ll put it this way, I don’t think anybody’s been as specific as this one. Sometimes they’ll set up political committees like Citizens For A Better Tomorrow, and it will be about going against a particular person. But I don’t know that it’s as clear as this effort where it is about a specific person and only a specific person. It’s not about Republican versus Democrat or anything like that.

VoxPopuli: When did you think about doing this? Because things seem to have happened very quickly. There was Congressman Daniel Webster’s retirement announcement. Then suddenly Anthony Sabatini jumped into the race. Then I read that you had set up your PAC — all within a day and a half. So when did you decide, Hey I’ve got a great idea. Let’s do this?

Peter Schorsch: Many years ago and this week. This week, I would say it was a complete surprise to us that Speaker Webster* was not going to run for re-election. And Sabatini, of course, jumped right into that. That’s very Sabatini-esque, not letting Webster have a moment, a day’s worth of time of people congratulating his — what is it? — 40 years of service.

I think about the fact that I got an oppo file on Anthony Sabatini when he first ran for the state legislature. And there were two other really competent candidates. Two women, if I remember. And I was just like, I’m not even gonna waste my time writing about this guy. There’s no way he’s getting in front of these other two candidates. And a couple of political consultants who were also working in the race kind of concluded the same. That it was gonna come down to these two women.

He won the primary, and in that district [District 32], winning the primary basically meant he was gonna win the election. And then he gets to Tallahassee, and I realized that I let him slip through my fingers. I didn’t raise the issue of him wearing blackface and his incendiary comments and some of the other things that I had heard, kind of at the rumor level, about what people thought of him at UF Law. I should have put all of that together and shared that information with my readers and then hopefully voters. But I didn’t. So as soon as I saw that he was running, I made the decision that I was not going to wait for others to act to get the information out about Anthony to people who may not be familiar with him.

VoxPopuli: It kind of seems like you’re trolling Sabatini a bit while taking on a serious issue.

Peter Schorsch: Yeah. I’m not going to be able to take him head on as a candidate. I’m not going to be able to argue issues with him. What you have to do is roll logs and hope that he trips up, which he has done previously. In my neck of the woods, Pinellas County, his firm got fired for basically being bad at their jobs.

I want to show voters in that congressional district that they’re going to have several choices. All of them are going to wear the red hat. All of them are going to be America First. All of them are gonna be rock-ribbed conservative. Don’t send the one person up there that’s going to be an embarrassment to you.

We just saw a Democratic member resign because she was an embarrassment to her party. We saw Matt Gaetz resign, the attorney general situation, because he had become an embarrassment to his party. We don’t have to keep picking these embarrassing politicians and still satisfy the policy goals of whatever party you’re a part of whether it be on the right or the left.

VoxPopuli: The money raised through the PAC, how will it be used?

Peter Schorsch: I think our job will be to communicate to other Republican decision-makers, the NRCC [National Republican Congressional Committee], Mar-a-Lago, etc. like Hey don’t endorse this guy. My big fear right now is if he gets endorsed by Trump. I would probably have to fold up the PAC. So one of the things I want to do is educate people that are going to be making decisions as major donors to not get behind this guy. That’s one of the first things we have to do.

Second, we have to make it clear to some potential candidates that were they to get in, there’s going to be a vehicle that’s able to handle the nastier part of campaigning. So, you know, you’ll have some air cover in there if you decide to go up against a candidate who is known as being kind of a bully.

Then third … there’s obviously the easy stuff, mail, television, etc. if we raise that kind of money, that’d be great. But I think there’s some fun ways of lampooning Sabatini where maybe we get a viral moment, and we are able to expose his past buffoonery to a larger audience.

I’m sure a lot of people really just know him as kind of “controversial,” which almost makes him sound like … I don’t know … a talk show host. You know, he’s supposed to be controversial, or something like that. What I want to show is that he’s mean. He has the potential to embarrass you. He’s extraordinarily self-centered. He will clearly run for anything.

I also want to make it clear to potential colleagues of his in Congress this is not somebody that you want to have up there. I want Mike Johnson to know that this is a guy who is gonna cause you a lot of problems in your caucus. This is a guy whose vote you’re not going to be able to count on if Republicans hang onto the majority.

This is a very nuanced effort. This is not just “Sabatini bad.” This is Sabtini is an asshole to his colleagues; he will curse out his Republican colleagues; he will embarrass you all; he will leak to the press; he will do his best to make your lives difficult in addition to all the things where he may be wrong on policy.

* Webster was Speaker of the Florida House from 1996 to 1998.