Was U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz's Republican Primary opponent planted by ousted House Speaker Kevin McCarthy?
Shortly before the April 26 qualifying deadline in Florida, Aaron Dimmock, a last-minute candidate, paid his $10,440 fee to appear on the GOP Primary ballot in Florida's 1st Congressional District.
Federal Election Commission reports show he filed a statement of candidacy the night before. The Aaron Dimmock For Congress campaign committee supporting his bid utilizes Maria Wojciechowski as its treasurer.
The Virginia-based Wojciechowski also serves as treasurer for the American Patriots PAC, a super PAC controlled by McCarthy.
Dimmock serves as director of Executive Development for the Aylstock, Witkin, Kreis and Overholtz Center for Leadership at the University of West Florida, giving him some prominence in the Florida Panhandle. He has held that position since September.
The page also lists Dimmock as the Director of the Missouri Leadership Academy, and that he's living in Jefferson City, Missouri, though federal paperwork lists his residency in Pensacola. The address for the campaign is a FedEx store in the city.
Voting records show Dimmock has been registered as a Republican in Orange Park, Florida since 2003. While Clay County is outside the district, federal candidates are only required to live within the state they will represent in Congress.
But after a report in The Daily Caller connected Dimmock to McCarthy and scoured his LinkedIn page finding supportive statements about Black Lives Matter, Gaetz railed against his political opponent on X.
"Meet Aaron W. Dimmock — the BLM supporting DEI instructor running against me in the Republican Primary," Gaetz posted. "I knew former Representative McCarthy would be getting a puppet of his to run. I didn't know it would be a Woke Toby Flenderson!"
Toby Flenderson is a fictional character from the American sitcom "The Office" who works as a politically correct human resources employee.
The feud between Gaetz and McCarthy has been well documented. Gaetz, a Fort Walton Beach Republican, filed the motion to vacate that resulted in McCarthy being the first House Speaker ever ousted from leadership by a vote mid-Congress.
McCarthy later resigned his seat in Congress, and has publicly alleged Gaetz's problems with him were personal. At a Georgetown University event, McCarthy recently said on stage he was ousted because one member "wanted me to stop an ethics complaint because he slept with a 17-year-old," as reported by Fox News.
None of Dimmock's social media accounts appear to have information about his run for Congress. He also does not appear to have a campaign website set up yet.
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