At the Sunshine Summit, this Saturday, Republican congressional candidates in District 13 squared off in a debate in hopes to secure their chances of becoming the Republican nomination to replace Rep. Charlie Crist’s (D-FL) .
With Rep. Crist throwing his hat into Florida's gubernatorial race, both political parties must nominate someone to square off with the opposing party in the November general election.
The candidates i Anna Paulina Luna, Amanda Makki, and Kevin Hayslett.
Luna won the Republican Primary in 2020 but lost to Crist in the general election by 6 points – 53 to 47.
Throughout the debate, there wasn’t a whole lot of, well… debating. It seemed as though the candidates were just looking to answer questions, and no one had a game plan to attack members of their own party. The main issues that came up during the debate was abortion, inflation, conservative censorship, and illegal immigration.
Luna, who is endorsed by former President Donald Trump, gave her thoughts about the social fabric of America during the debate.
"A recent Gallup poll shows the vast majority of Americans believe in God but it seems that the left's goal is to erode the importance and influence of these values in the political sphere. Everything the left seems to be pushing today is some stupid Marxist ideology... It is popular for candidates to give up lip service to God and mitigate and then vote against the majority," said Luna
Luna boasts a large following on social media, garnering nearly half a million Instagram followers and hosting a podcast known as "From the Desk of Anna Paulina Luna".
Kevin Hayslett mentioned that we need to "control our destiny."
"I believe we need to control our destiny. That means we need to control our food...and we need to control our energy. When we're relying on OPEC, or Russia, or Venezuela, we can't do that as a country," said Hayslett.
Amanda Makki spoke about the infiltration of leftism in public schooling.
"It was scary to think who the teachers are in our school systems for teaching our children the garbage that they're learning," said Makki.
As none of the candidates have served in the House of Representatives, it appeared that the three are using are all taking a page out of the "outsider" playbook, promising to take on the establishment from within.
Luna has a significant lead in the latest RPOF public opinion poll, and it was expected that Makki and Hayslett would have used the opportunity to take a jab at Luna's past support for President Barack Obama, but neither candidate seized the opportunity.
The debate can be described as boring.
The upcoming Republican Primary will take place on August 23rd.
Publisher Javier Manjarres added to this story.
