Obnoxious 'mini-Trump of Sarasota’ is a 'political car crash': report
One of the Republican candidates running in Florida's 16th congressional district was the focus of a Sarasota Magazine profile titled, "Everyone Hates Martin Hyde, and He Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way."
"Sarasota Republican congressional candidate Martin Hyde is ugly, obnoxious and a bully with no convictions—at least that’s how he described himself to me. If people have called him worse, he’s almost surely said it about it himself first. He’s infamous and has made national news more than once for his antics. Often referred to as the mini-Trump of Sarasota, he’s a political car crash at which people can’t help but gawk," Isaac Eger wrote.
Hyde is challenging GOP Rep. Vern Buchanan, who was first elected to Congress a decade ago.
"After video of Hyde berating a female police officer for pulling him over went viral (it has earned nearly 16 million YouTube views and counting), his primary campaign against longtime incumbent Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Longboat Key, looked dead in the water. He’s despised by his own Sarasota Republican party elite, and he’s run for office twice already and lost both times," Eger reported. "Even he knows his chances of unseating Buchanan, who has been in office since 2007 and who serves on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, are dismal. And yet, he’s still in the race."
Hyde caused a stir in December when he installed large #FJB Christmas lights on his mansion. The hashtag is the acronym for "f*ck Joe Biden."
Hyde bragged about being interviewed by Tucker Carlson on Fox News above a chyron reading "candidate's bad behavior caught on bodycam during stop & was shared online"
"I'm just an ordinary pleb," Hyde said.
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Eger says he pointed out Hyde has an elevator in his $2 million home.
"I see your point," Hyde said.
Hyde claims Buchanan "doesn't even like Trump."
“Never trust a guy who is over 70 years old without a single gray hair,” he says. “I always like to joke about how we go to the same place to get Botox. I use it by the barrel load. But I’ll never dye my hair.”
Buchanan received the endorsement of notorious political consultant Roger Stone the day after writing Stone a $15,000 check and hiring him for $10,000 a month.
Hyde ended up parting ways with Stone along with advisors Michael Flynn and Rudy Giuliani.
"After spending a few days with Hyde, I wondered why some people are drawn to people like him. Why does an English showboat who owns an office supply company evoke such strong feelings? Why did tens of millions of people watch a low-resolution video of him being a jerk to police officers? In these hyper-partisan times, when the stakes always seem high but meaningful change seems rare, watching the other side fail is perhaps all that we have left," the Sarasota Magazine reported. "I get the appeal of raging against the establishment, but I’m left with a feeling that, in the end, it might just help the powers that be. Instead of our elected officials becoming the focus of our justifiable anger, Hyde opens his mouth and people yell at him instead. He is like an effigy who lights himself on fire."
Read the full profile.
Watch the video below or at this link.
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