Florida GOP Congressman Changes Photo After Getting Called Out by Reporter for Using One from Ohio

AP Photo/Phil Sears

Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) drew mockery after it was discovered that the photo he was using on a social media profile did not represent his coastal Florida congressional district, but Dayton, Ohio — a landlocked city about 900 miles away.

Fine was recently elected to Congress after his predecessor, Mike Waltz, resigned to take the role of President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser (a position Waltz has since left in the wake of the SignalGate scandal). In a special election held on April 1 — yes, April Fools’ Day — Fine defeated his Democratic opponent by roughly 14 points, but that was far short of how Waltz and Trump had previously performed in that district. Fine’s struggles to convince House Republicans he would comfortably win the seat led to Trump withdrawing Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-NY) nomination for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.

The congressman has an abundant share of critics all along the political spectrum. At one time he carried the water for some of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ controversial bills, but the relationship between the two devolved into a bitter feud. Fine also has a long history of divisive comments that have drawn condemnation from the left and right.

On Wednesday, reporter and VP of operations for Florida Politics Phil Ammann tweeted a screenshot of Fine’s account on X, formerly Twitter.

“Not the most critical issue out there, I admit,” Ammann quipped. “But why does [Fine] have an image of Dayton, Ohio as his profile header?”

Screenshot via X.

Fine drew criticism during the campaign for not living in the district, and the selection of this photo suggests an embarrassing lack of knowledge of Florida’s sixth congressional district.

Fine’s district stretches from St. Augustine along the state’s Atlantic coast, through Palm Coast, to South Daytona, and extends westward to include the outskirts of Ocala, Leesburg, and Sanford. It also includes a very small portion part of Lake County that’s included in the greater Orlando metropolitan area, but not any part of within the city limits — and certainly not the downtown area.

It’s mostly smaller towns. None of the downtown areas included in the district look anything remotely like the photo Fine had on his account. Both Sanford and Orlando are near lakes, for example, but have lots of palm trees included in the landscaping. Orlando is the only city with buildings anywhere close to those heights, but again, downtown Orlando is not included in Fine’s district.

Fine did end up switching the photo with one that said “Congressman Randy Fine: 6th District of Florida” on an overhead view of the beach, as Ammann noted with evident joy.

“Who says journalism is dead?” wrote Ammann. “[Fine] has a new profile header. Don’t know if it’s CD 6, or even Florida, but it must be closer than #Ohio.”

Screenshot via X.

It turns out that Fine probably did manage to get it right with the new header photo. A reverse image search turned up this public domain photo, posted on Wikipedia, that looks like the exact same photo, but flipped.

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