Yesterday, McHenry County Blog published the stinging rebuke of unsuccessful Republican U.S. Senate candidate Peggy Hubbard from the Illinois Republican Party Co-Chair Mark Shaw for her actively working against the Republican U.S. Senate nominee Mark Curran.
In comments, a response to a comment was there is a soulmate for an unsuccessful Republican primary candidate for Hubbard.
Therefore, permit me to introduce all to Darren Aquino, an unsuccessful congressional candidate in Florida’s hotly contested 19th district.
There are plenty of Illinois connections into the FL-19, most notably the wife of IL-14 Republican nominee Jim Oberweis, who has been a Florida resident and voter for 10 years in the 19th district since Allen West’s successful election to Congress in 2010.
This video Aquino tweeted yesterday afternoon will tell all you need to know, and McHenry County Blog will follow-up with the truth:
Oh, the audacity of the 61 year old Aquino saying primary winner Byron Donalds, 41, should have called Aquino. No, the vanquished Republican opponents should be calling the primary winner, unconditionally endorsing them on election night (or the day after), and pledge to help the nominee to win in November.
So Aquino, a former B-actor who made appearances on the Law & Order shows and The Sopranos, taints all that he has done for disabled veterans as he claims for 35 years with this unsubstantiated claim of voter fraud and discrimination by local election authorities, the boards of election in southwest Florida.
And he says he plans to take the local election authorities to Federal court, though there were no irregularities reported in local media of any violations taking place.
Now here are the vote totals, and campaign disclosure for each candidate through July 29, and the super PACs spending through the end of the primary campaign as filed with the Federal Election Commission (FEC):
| Candidate | Votes | % of vote | $ Raised 7/29 | $ Spent 7/29 | Super PAC Support | Super PAC Opposed |
| Byron Donalds | 23,480 | 22.6 | 1,182,919 | 881,380 | 1,715,695.00 | 138,132.00 |
| Dane Eagle | 22,706 | 21.9 | 741,113 | 490,896 | 222,944.00 | 631,859.00 |
| Casey Askar | 20,770 | 20.0 | 3,686,916 | 2,774,716 | 5,450.00 | 998,089.00 |
| William Figlesthaler | 19,070 | 18.4 | 2,544,284 | 2,303,673 | – | 163,838.00 |
| Randy Henderson | 7,848 | 7.6 | 263,556 | 223,048 | – | – |
| Christy McLaughlin | 4,245 | 4.1 | 22,570 | 14,833 | – | – |
| Dan Severson | 3,196 | 3.1 | 141,259 | 138,312 | – | – |
| Darren Aquino | 1,466 | 1.4 | 74,774 | 63,793 | – | – |
| Dan Kowal | 1,134 | 1.1 | 59,600 | 39,912 | – | – |
So what Aquino is not accepting is the fact he garnered only 1,466 votes, or 1.4% of the primary vote in an 8th place finish, compared with Donalds having the most votes in the winner-take-all congressional primary on August 18. He won by 774 votes over 2nd place finisher, Florida Assistant House Majority Leader Dane Eagle in a congressional primary that saw nearly 104K Republican votes cast.
The FL-19 was, with the numbers cited above, a primary with 9 candidates which thus far totals $10.8 million spending, taking the candidates’ spend through July 29 and the spending, either in support or opposition, of the super PACs through Independent Expenditures (IE). By the time the final candidate FEC disclosures are filed next month, this primary would likely be a $12 million race, or more.
For comparison, the IL-14 Republican primary with 7 candidates was about a $4.5 million race, including super PAC spending totaling $1.15 million. In FL-19, super PAC spending was over $3 million.
And Aquino, through July 29, had raised just under $75K, and had spent nearly $64K with just under $11K cash on hand. On his 2nd quarter FEC filing in early July, he reported a negative cash on hand through June 30 of over $5K.
A Republican primary with an open seat in a safe Republican district would be expected to draw many Republican candidates, but the spending level was exacerbated by two candidates putting a total over $5 million of their own money into the race.
So the other candidates obtained outside funding, and Donalds, a 2-term state representative who was not the Republican establishment’s choice, won the support of the Club for Growth, who paid for nearly all of Donalds’ support from the super PAC, and spent nearly $1 million in opposition IEs against the candidate who put $3 million of his own money into the race during the spring.
And to add to the challenge of Donalds winning, and as published here on McHenry County Blog was an election day dirty trick with fake texts, fake YouTube accounts and an 8 year old video of Donalds conceding the FL-19 race when he was unsuccessful in 2012 to give the appearance he was dropping out of the 2020 primary.
Between Donalds’ campaign and two of the super PACs, over 80,000 texts were sent out throughout election day to show the drop-out text messages were false. Donalds still won the primary.
So, last Friday (9/4), Aquino formed a Twitter group with many users and included me. By mid morning, I found myself blocked by Aquino in Twitter, which was odd, because throughout the primary, while not supporting Aquino’s candidacy for the last month and a half, we had a cordial and professional relationship.
Yet here is the tweet that apparently set Aquino off:
So, congratulating the Republican nominee Donalds for winning an important pro-life endorsement (Right to Life supporters were divided during the primary) whom I backed in the primary set him off because I found out later, after Aquino unblocked me long enough to send a Twitter direct message that he was running as a write-in candidate on November 3.
Honestly, I thought Florida, like Illinois and most other states have a “loser law” to prevent candidates who lost the primary from running as a 3rd party or write-in candidate.
But the “loser law” does not prevent an unsuccessful candidate from asking voters to write their name on the ballot. The truth the write-in votes won’t count is incidental.
To be clear, I communicated with Mr. Aquino last Saturday via email to help him see reason, and presented plenty of facts, including credible independent polling from mid-June up to the day before the primary, predicting he would finish in the low single digits, among other facts like Donalds won the endorsement of the NRA, and was the only candidate with an “A+” rating (Aquino had an “AQ” rating, which means he answered the NRA questions right, but it’s a “qualified” rating since he had no elective office votes to back up his position on the 2nd amendment).
After renewing his call for voters to write his name in yesterday, Aquino chose not to see reason, and decided to continue, for now, this quixotic write-in candidacy for November 3.
Fortunately, FL-19 is a safe Republican district, and nominee Donalds will not taking anything for granted against his Democrat opponent. Given this fact, what Aquino is doing not accepting the Republican primary results of last month in my honest opinion is a display of distorted thinking and denial.
The truth is, and as Florida Politics reporter Jacob Ogles accurately documented in his story of August 19 exposing what really motivates Aquino, not accepting the will of the Republican primary voters is sad.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
This article is better than sominex!
Bravo, Lopez. Bravo!
Gary, this article is a real sleep inducer, better than melatonin.
Lookie, a black conservative, lets all swoon and fawn.
Are we ever going to get beyond race?