Who is Jimmy Patronis? Florida CFO seeks to seat in Congress in April 1 special election

Jimmy Patronis says he is running for Congress at the urging of President Donald Trump.

Patronis told the News Journal in January that as soon as former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz was named as Trump’s pick to be the U.S. Attorney General nominee, he started receiving calls from across the state, and people encouraged him to run.

"My phone started blowing up with people trying to encourage me to do it. Look, it's flattering, it's intoxicating to get that type of outreach," Patronis said. "And I think what folks looked at was, 'Jimmy, I don't know what your political future is, but we love what you've done in Tallahassee. Would you consider running and doing the same thing in Washington?' So, you know, we prayed about it, we thought about it."

Then, the day before his 20th wedding anniversary, Trump called.

"The president calls and, and he says, 'Jimmy, if you'll run for Congress, I'll endorse you.' And so I'm thinking, all right, well, and then he starts telling me all the reasons why we should do it. And, my wife, she comes into the room, and he puts her on the spot, says, 'Katie, I'm about to endorse your husband, but if you don't want him to do this, I'm not going to endorse him.' And so, I mean, he was being cute, but in all seriousness, this is a historic opportunity to take our country back from the madness that we've had over the last four years.”

While Gaetz’s bid to become Attorney General went down in flames, Patronis’ bid to replace him in Congress had success in the Republican primary. Patronis beat nine other Republicans in the Jan. 28 primary.

Who is Jimmy Patronis?

Patronis is a native of Panama City and has been involved in state politics for more than two decades.

Patronis graduated with a degree in restaurant management from Gulf Coast Community College and a bachelor's degree in political science from Florida State University. He grew up in and now is a partner in his family's historic Panama City seafood restaurant Captain Anderson's.

Patronis got involved in politics interning for former Broward County state Sen. Ken Jenne in the Florida Senate and in the United Kingdom's House of Commons before working in the Panama City Chamber of Commerce and the Bay County airport authority. Patronis was appointed to the Florida Elections Commission by Gov. Lawton Chiles in 1998 and re-appointed by Gov. Jeb Bush in 2001.

In 2006, he was elected to the Florida House of Representatives and was reelected multiple times. He backed Rick Scott's gubernatorial bid and was later appointed by Scott to the Florida Public Service Commission in 2015 and the Constitution Revision Commission. In 2017, Scott appointed Patronis to the Chief Financial Officer position, and Patronis won statewide elections to the office in 2018 and 2022.

Patronis touts his time as CFO, saying Florida is in the best financial position in the history of the state when you look at the state's reserve funds.

Patronis' run for Congress

While winning the Republican primary is usually the deciding factor in Northwest Florida, strange things can happen in special elections. Patronis’ opponent Gay Valimont has put up unheard of fundraising numbers for a Democratic candidate in Northwest Florida.

Patronis has used that fact as an attack against her.

"There's definitely been a plea on behalf of my opponent to donors all over the country to come and help us flip this seat blue, 'And with your help with dollars from California and New York and New Jersey and Illinois and all these other places you're never going to live,' trying to influence a race in Northwest Florida," Patronis told the News Journal last week. "I think the fact of whatever TV (advertisement) being played by one candidate over another, this is what the Democrats are going to do. They're going to spend money because they've got no other race in the country to spend money on other than Congressional District 1 and Congressional District 6. So all of their resources are going (into this race) because they're trying to use this as a referendum on President Trump's leadership.”

Patronis has had to play defense in the campaign, defending his role overseeing the consumer-side of the insurance industry in the state as Florida Chief Financial Officer.

Patronis said no one in Florida has done more than him to bring insurance relief "at the point of purchase.”

"What had happened here in Florida is not unique," Patronis said. "It was happening in all 50 states, but now what's happened in Florida is we had to take some medicine because we had man-made problems that had to be corrected in 2022. And I told people, you're not going to see relief in your insurance premiums overnight. It is going to take somewhere from 12 to 18 months. When we got to about 14 months, you started to see the rate carriers in Florida start to file for rate decreases. That's not happening in Texas, that's not happening in Louisiana, that's not happening in California."

Patronis also said he'd supported other measures to lower rates, such as tax breaks and grants for homeowners who harden their homes to storms, and he blames rising construction cost for a large part of the insurance increases.

"There's not a single solution that has come out of Washington with the Democrats in charge that it curved inflation or changed interest rates, which are the two biggest cost drivers of why your premiums have gone up," Patronis said.

Patronis said he fully backs the moves Trump is making in Washington D.C. in cutting federal agencies and firing federal workers, though he said Congress should step in if he goes too far.

“The president has his ability to hire and fire people,” Patronis said. “I could see where that would create some anxiety, but at the same time, some of this stuff they feel like is only under the discretion of Congress because they enact these things into law. So again, I think once Congress sees the president cross the line on something that ultimately is not what's in the best interest, then Congress will react.”

When asked what that line would be for Congress to react, Patronis said he did want to get into hypotheticals.

“Hypotheticals are really not a good way to judge somebody's decision-making ability,” Patronis said. “Let us have a real situation and have to make a decision under pressure.”

Patronis said he’s always accessible for people to reach out when they have a problem because he’s a “workhorse” and “not a showhorse,” and he did not go into politics to generate “content for entertainment.”

“People reach out to Jimmy for everything because Jimmy gets things done,” Patronis said. “It's no different in why President Trump reached out to me. He didn't reach out to anybody else in the primary, saying, 'Jimmy, I want you to run for Congress. Jimmy, if you'll run, I'll support you.' And I'm going to leverage my relationship with the White House to do exactly that. I'm going to get things done for the citizens of Northwest Florida. My opponent is not going to be able to be able to do that.”