Matt Gaetz may 'act like a petulant child' – but that makes Republicans 'support him even more': Report

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) enjoys broad support among his Republican-leaning constituents back home in the Florida pandhandle.

The right-wing congressman orchestrated the removal of House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), with just eight Republicans joining him in voting for the ouster – but his constituents seem to approve, reported the New York Times.

“If we got rid of the speaker of the House, hopefully we get someone in there who doesn’t make backdoor deals with Democrats,” said Sandra Atkinson, chairwoman of the Republican Party of Okaloosa County.

Gaetz remains widely popular in his district, where he won re-election last year by 36 points, and his antics and scandals have done little to damage him.

“There’s a lot of people who like Matt Gaetz,” said Pensacola artist Joel Terry May. “He speaks for the people, and he speaks out.”

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The 67-year-old May compared his congressman favorably to former Alabama Gov. George Wallace, who visited his school in the 1960s and ran a third-party campaign for president in 1968 as a segregationist.

“People didn’t like George Wallace nationally, but the people who elected him and represented him did,” May said. “That’s what Gaetz also understands. When you represent somebody, you want them to maintain the feel of the people. People want to see Washington work. They want their representatives to have a pulse on the area.”

The district's Democrats, however, see Gaetz as a "chaos agent" who's more interested in bickering and drawing attention to himself than governance.

“He is following through on using chaos as both a performative art — that phrase is overused but it’s true — and because he’s frustrated he’s not getting his own way,” said Phil Ehr, a Democrat who ran against Gaetz in 2018 and is now running for the U.S. Senate. “In some ways, he’s acting like a petulant child.”

But Republicans – even those who disagreed with McCarthy's removal – still back Gaetz, and voters who only learned about the leadership change when asked their opinion on it were especially supportive.

“That just makes me support him even more,” said Tim Hudson, a 26-year-old lifelong resident of Pensacola. "[It] speaks to how the world really is right now. We’re tired. We’re fed up. We want to see people start getting things done.”