Leaked Private Texts Reveal Wild Fishback Campaign Drama
Aides feared candidate’s couch was repossessed, called heterosexual sex gay.
Fishback Staff Wish He’d Just Return His Luxury Watch Already
NO ONE EXPECTED James Fishback to get this far.
As the leading groyper politician in America, he has gone from weirdo outsider to registering in the mid-single digits in GOP primary polls for Florida’s gubernatorial race. But polls tell only part of the story. Fishback also regularly draws hundreds of fired-up college students to his events, some of them even melting down in tears upon meeting him. The favored candidate in the governor’s race, Trump-endorsed frontrunner Rep. Byron Donalds, is concerned enough that he denounced Fishback as not a real “groyper.”1
Meanwhile, white nationalist podcaster (and groyper icon) Nick Fuentes has hailed Fishback as “really smart” and “very impressive,” noting that he laughed at a racist comment Fishback made about Donalds. These comments would be a kiss of death for many, but it’s a badge of honor for those on the increasingly influential far-right wing of the conservative movement.
Yet even as he’s ascended to previously unimaginable political heights, Fishback has quietly been beset by a big problem in his personal life. He’s deep in debt, owing more than $200,000 to his former hedge-fund employer as a result of some machinations against his old boss. That number could balloon to over $2 million once legal fees are calculated, according to an affidavit filed by the hedge fund’s lawyers in October. And the repo men are closing in.
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Last week, the hedge fund, Greenlight Capital, asked a judge to rule that the Tesla Model 3 Fishback drives on the campaign trail really does belong to him, despite being registered in his father’s name. It could pave the way for it to be seized. Fishback also has to appear in court on April 1 to explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt after failing to provide documents that would help creditors seize his assets.
The dissonance between Fishback’s social media success and his disastrous personal finances hasn’t been lost on his campaign staffers. According to text messages I’ve obtained, those staffers privately bemoaned their candidate’s money problems, fretted over what the problems could mean for his gubernatorial bid, and wondered openly if his property was already being seized.
The text messages were provided to The Bulwark by Bryant Fulgham, a disillusioned former Fishback campaign worker who served as the candidate’s county outreach chair. Fulgham provided the messages and talked about his experiences on the campaign because, he said, he’s concerned Fishback is misleading his passionate young followers about how much he could actually accomplish if elected.
In one early February exchange, Fishback’s campaign manager, Emma Wright, claimed that his couch had been repossessed.
“Did they legit take it?” Fulgham asked Wright. “Or was he joking.”
“I think they did man,” Wright replied, adding a sad face emoji.
“Oh my god shit,” Fulgham wrote back. “We’re gonna be sleeping on the floor soon up there,” he added, with two weeping emojis.
Wright replied by joking about Fishback’s Tesla offering the couch moral support while also being repossessed.
“Telsa (also being seized): STAY STRONG COUCH,” she wrote, adding a black fist-up emoji.
Fishback did not dispute the veracity of the texts. But he did broadly dismiss the messages, and he insisted that none of his couches have ever been repossessed.
“This is silly,” Fishback wrote in an email to The Bulwark. “My couch is sitting in my living room.”
Fulgham ultimately quit the Fishback campaign, and not because he didn’t have a couch to sleep on. Instead, he says his departure came because he ran afoul of a veterans group for sailors on USS Liberty—a ship Israel accidentally sank during the Six-Day War in 1967. The ship has become a rallying cry for groypers, who are heavily critical of the U.S.–Israel alliance (to say nothing of their embrace of antisemitism). Fulgham claims he clashed with one of the veterans over how much of their expenses the campaign would cover for an event, after which Liberty crew members complained to Fishback.
“James was pissed that I supposedly upset the USS Liberty vets,” Fulgham said.
In Fulgham’s telling, Fishback offered him another position that Fulgham viewed as a demotion, prompting him to quit on February 18. Nearly a month after his departure, Fulgham now insists that Fishback is misleading his supporters. He compares the campaign to the movie The Wolf of Wall Street.
“James is a con artist at the end of the day,” he said.
Asked about Fulgham’s criticism and account of his exit from the campaign, Fishback claimed Fulgham never held the “county outreach chair” position. Fulgham provided me with an organizational chart that listed him holding the role, as well as internal campaign documents that showed him coordinating the campaign’s county chairs. Additionally, Fulgham sent me several pictures that showed him speaking closely with Fishback or in prominent positions at campaign events.
“Jesus Christ,” Fulgham said, “I’ve created Frankenstein.”2
WHETHER OR NOT Fulgham is disgruntled over how his time on the campaign ended, it is indisputable that Fishback is dealing with financial issues stemming from his past employment as a junior “research analyst” at Greenlight Capitol. When Fishback quit the hedge fund to launch his own, he allegedly began describing his past role as “head of macro” in an apparent effort to lure investors. The folks at Greenlight weren’t impressed. They also accused Fishback of taking confidential company information and trying to direct money from the firm’s charity gift-matching program to a nonprofit that he had started to encourage debating on college campuses.
According to court filings, Greenlight moved to seize a number of Fishback’s possessions, including the Tesla.
Some of Fishback’s campaign staffers even worried that the firm would come for the candidate’s watch, a luxury Cartier that lawyers for Fishback’s creditors claimed he wore to a deposition.
In February messages with Fulgham, Wright expressed her wish for Fishback to turn over the watch in order to help satisfy his debts.
“Like bro just give them the Rolex and call it a day,” Wright wrote, apparently mistaking the watch brand.
She also appeared to have doubts about whether Fishback was really unable to hand the watch over.
“He claims he lost it or something idk,” Wright wrote.
“Oh ffs,” Fulgham replied.
“Yeeeeeeah,” she wrote.
“Yeah I lost it in my safety deposit box,” Fulgham wrote.
“Basically lmfao,” Wright wrote.
Asked about the exchange, Fishback—perhaps seizing on Wright’s brand confusion—told me: “I have never owned a Rolex.”
Fishback doesn’t exactly come across as a great boss in the texts reviewed by The Bulwark. In messages to Fulgham, Wright complained twice that Fishback had given her an “ass blasting” about various campaign plans.
The campaign chats are also filled with what you’d expect from a group of groypers. Twice, staffers refer to Fishback or his supporters as “YNs”—a slang term involving the n-word. At one point, Alex Munguia—a Fishback associate who, while still in college, participated in many of his hedge-fund antics and is now a senior adviser to his campaign—expressed enthusiasm for Fuentes’s view that heterosexual sex is actually, well, gay.
“Only thing straighter than straight sex is actually gay sex,” Munguia wrote in a chatroom for top Fishback staffers.
Wright also tried to distance Fishback from the college events that have become his specialty. After Fulgham proposed holding a fundraiser to raise money from college students, Wright said they needed to focus on older backers.
“College kids are broke and we already have their vote, so a gala for campuses isn’t the best use of resources,” Wright wrote. “The goal is to get away from just hyping up the younger crowd and moving into the older crowds and donors.”
These days, Fishback is having enough trouble finding even more downmarket venues. Last week, he claimed Waffle House banned him from holding events there. Then Fishback posted a screenshot implying he was invited via a direct message on Instagram to hold events at IHOP instead—a claim that restaurant chain disputed as fake.
Donalds’s point was not that it’s good to be a groyper but rather that Fishback doesn’t actually believe anything and that he is a purveyor of “performative slop.”
He obviously meant Frankenstein’s monster.
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At first I read "Candidates Feared Couch was Possessed" and it didn't strike me as that weird.