“He was Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump,” Mr. Lombardo said of the congressman, “and the First District is all about Trump.”
No other congressional district in the country has as many military veterans, a group that could have been badly hurt by a shutdown. Yet even his critics concede that Mr. Gaetz remains popular among them.
Barry Goodson, 70, a registered Democrat and retired Army veteran who once helped organize people against a plan backed by Mr. Gaetz to privatize some of Northwest Florida’s sandy-white beaches, said he worries his health care providers at the Department of Veterans Affairs would suffer under a shutdown.
“I still can’t understand why Gaetz hates negotiating rather than working out something for the people in the district,” he said.
“A chaos agent is not good for public policy,” said Samantha Herring, a Democratic national committeewoman in Walton County. “It’s not good for getting highway funds, education and veterans affairs.”
