October 7, 2025 by David Silverberg
Correction: The correct name of the company owned by Jim Schwartzel is Sun Broadcasting, which has no ownership stake in WINK TV.
What was promising to be a messy but obscure congressional race for Florida’s 19th Congressional District was suddenly catapulted into national prominence on Tuesday, Oct. 1, when Madison Cawthorn, a 30-year-old former North Carolina congressman and media bad boy announced that he would be running.
Because of his past behavior and erratic record, national and local media suddenly focused on him and the district. But in fact he’s an unlikely candidate with long odds in a crowded field.
The real focus of all this attention is the seat being vacated by Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), who is seeking the governorship.
As of right now there are nine declared Republican aspirants to the congressional seat and a single Democrat.
It’s very reminiscent of the 2020 congressional election when at one point there were 12 Republican candidates scrambling for the seat of retiring Republican Francis Rooney. He stepped down after two terms and the unpardonable sin of saying that the evidence should be considered in Donald Trump’s impeachment trial.
From that scrimmage (which ultimately narrowed to nine candidates) Donalds emerged the victor. Now the seat’s up for grabs again, with a whole new cast of characters—and with a little less than a year until the Republican primary election on Aug. 18, 2026, there may be new entrants.
It needs to be emphasized that it is still very early in the election cycle. Some candidates have not yet posted websites explaining their proposals and positions. They have not yet filed Federal Election Commission campaign finance reports. Nor have they all registered with the Florida Department of State. Candidates have until noon on Friday, April 24 of next year to qualify and more may appear.
This article will survey just the Republican candidates, their backgrounds and platforms. A separate article will evaluate and analyze the race. A third article will profile Democrat Howard Sapp.
But first, a look at the district.
The 19th Congressional District
The 19th Congressional District of Florida covers the coastal area from Cape Coral to Marco Island. Its eastern boundary largely follows Interstate Highway 75 with a small, special carve-out for Donalds’ home that was made in the last redistricting so that he would reside in the district without changing his address.
The District is older, whiter and slightly richer than the rest of the country.
It has a population of 809,197 people according to one estimate based on Census data. That population is 67 percent White, 21 percent Hispanic and 7 percent Black. The median age is 53 years, which is 25 percent higher than in the rest of Florida and 1.4 times higher than in the entire United States. Women represent about 51 percent of its population.
At $52,402 per year it has a higher per capita income than both Florida and the United States and at $76,248 its median income is about the same as the rest of the country but a little higher than the rest of Florida. Even so, it has about a 12 percent poverty rate.
The Cook Political Report, the authoritative survey of congressional districts, rates it solidly Republican. For the 2026 election the Cook Partisan Voter Index is rating it R+14, meaning that in the past two presidential elections, the district’s results were 14 percentage points more Republican than the national average, making it the 88th most Republican district nationally.
The district encompasses two counties, Lee and Collier, both of which are majority Republican in registered voters. In Lee County, of 508,919 registered voters, 48 percent are Republican, 21.9 percent are Democratic, and 29.9 percent are registered as “other,” according to figures from the Lee County Election Supervisor. In Collier County, of 259,982 registered voters, 55.2 percent are Republican, 19.3 percent are Democratic, 22.4 percent have no party affiliation and 2.9 percent are registered to other parties, according to figures from the Collier County Supervisor of Elections.
This is the district that the following candidates are vying to represent in the US House of Representatives.
They are listed in alphabetical order, according to last name.
Madison Cawthorn
The instant he announced that he was running for Congress on Oct. 1, Cawthorn stole the media spotlight in Southwest Florida politics.
The reason is that he previously held the seat for North Carolina’s 11th District from 2021 to 2023. Currently separated from Christina Bayardelle, his wife of one year (from 2020 to 2021), the 30-year old Cawthorn made headlines and raised eyebrows during his brief congressional tenure.
In that time he carved out a role for himself as an extreme, vocal Trumpist and conspiracy theorist who made unsubstantiated assertions and hurled insults at opponents, journalists and fellow Republicans.
He voted to overturn the results of the 2020 election and addressed the “Stop the Steal” rally on the Ellipse that led to the attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
His most infamous statement was his assertion in a March 2022 interview that he had been invited to an orgy by a fellow Republican lawmaker (unnamed at the time and ever since) and that he had seen prominent politicians using cocaine in front of him.
He was denounced by fellow Republicans, was the subject of numerous calls for ethics investigations and was the focus of multiple allegations of financial improprieties, favoritism, and House rules violations.
Cawthorn was defeated in a North Carolina Republican primary in 2022, after which he announced that “It’s time for the rise of the new right, it’s time for Dark MAGA to truly take command,” with “Dark MAGA” generally understood to represent vengeful Trumpism.
It was after this loss that Cawthorn purchased a $1.1 million home in Cape Coral and moved there, registering as a Florida voter in 2023.
As he states on his campaign website, “Florida gave me a second chance, and now I’m running for Congress to fight for faith, family, freedom, and the America First values we believe in. Washington is full of snakes, but I’m ready to drain the swamp and defend Florida.” He calls himself “an unapologetic conservative and one of President Trump’s strongest allies.”
As of this writing, Cawthorn was not yet registered with the Florida Department of State as a candidate.
He has, however, considerable familiarity with Florida—and Florida law enforcement.
It was near Daytona Beach, Fla., in 2014 during a Spring Break trip that he lost the use of his legs in a car accident. He was a passenger and the injury left him dependent on a wheelchair. More recently, on April 14, 2025 Cawthorn was the driver when his 2021 Mercedes rear-ended a Florida Highway Patrol car on Interstate 75 in Collier County. He was cited for driving without a license on Aug.19, 2025 and then arrested on Sept. 10 when he failed to appear for his court date.
Chris Collins
Like Cawthorn, Christopher Carl “Chris” Collins is another former Republican congressman with a criminal record.
Collins, 75, represented New York’s 27th Congressional District, the area around Buffalo, NY from 2013 to 2019. He was the first member of Congress to endorse Trump for president in 2016.
In August 2018 Collins and his son were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for insider trading and making false statements.
The charges related to a company called Innate Immunotherapeutics, where Collins recruited investors while in office. In 2017, when he received news that the company’s medication to treat multiple sclerosis had failed its tests, Collins called his son from a lawn party at the Trump White House and told him to sell the stock before the news was made public. By doing this his son and another close relative avoided nearly $800,000 in losses when the stock’s price plummeted 92 percent the next day.
Collins was charged while he was in the midst of a re-election campaign. He suspended the campaign, then restarted it, then went on to a very narrow victory in the November 2018 election and took office in January 2019.
However, Collins didn’t last long in his seat. On Sept. 30, 2019 he announced his resignation to take effect the next day and that same day pleaded guilty to the charges against him.
“By virtue of his position, Collins helped write the laws of this country and acted as if the law didn’t apply to him,” said US Attorney Geoffrey Berman, after Collins pleaded guilty.
Collins was barred by the Security and Exchange Commission from serving as an officer or director of any public company. In October 2020 he began serving a 26-month prison sentence. But that didn’t last long either—he was pardoned by Trump on Dec. 22, 2020.
Collins purchased a home on Marco Island and told a judge in 2019: “I’m now a Florida resident and will be FL for a while as the press settles down and moves on.” He served his prison time in a federal prison in Pensacola.
In June, Collins was one of the first candidates to announce his run for the 19th District shortly after Donalds launched his bid for governor. He is listed as a candidate with the Florida Department of State.
As of this writing Collins did not have a campaign website, nor had he posted any policy positions related to Congressional District 19.
John Fratto
John “Johnny” Fratto, 46, is switching his sights to the 19th Congressional District from the 26th, where he ran for Congress unsuccessfully in 2024.
Fratto’s chief claim to fame in that race was a campaign rap video extolling Fratto’s Trumpist virtues that was filmed at Oakes’ Seed to Table market and was meant to appeal to the district’s Hispanic voters.
“America’s first bloodline mafia congressman versus deep state communist,” said the opening lines of the rap, which continued with a chorus that sounded like: “The man knows, voting Johnny Fratto.”
It didn’t work. Fratto was crushed by Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-26-Fla.), who won by a lopsided 73.2 percent in the Republican primary to Fratto’s anemic 16.5 percent, despite Fratto’s endorsement by local farmer, grocer and political kingpin Francis Alfred “Alfie” Oakes III and Republican political operative Roger Stone.
In 2024, responding to questions from the website Ballotpedia, Fratto stated that he was born in Des Moines, Iowa but then seems to contradict himself with the statement: “Originally from Southern California, I moved my family to Southern Florida to be close to my wife’s family, and to raise my kids in a state that will help them become hard working, honest adults.”
He listed his career experience as “working as an entrepreneur.” He has also claimed to have been an executive producer for TV and movies.
As of this writing, Fratto did not have a campaign website for his District 19 run but he had announced his candidacy on Facebook. He did not post any specific policies or proposals but he has made clear his support for Trump and his agenda in the past. He says he wants to restore the country to “its traditional values.”
Fratto is registered as a candidate with the Florida Department of State.
Ola Hawatmeh
Ola Nesheiwat Hawatmeh is a registered candidate with the Florida Department of State.
Hawatmeh does not have a campaign website.
A LinkedIn profile states that she is a senior policy advisor, chief executive officer and founder of Mom Me Makeover and OLA Style, apparently a sole proprietorship. She is also listed as a senior policy advisor to Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-5-Ind.) as of December 2024.
The only policy statement attributable to Hawatmeh is an undated Instagram video post, made from an unidentified airport when Hawatmeh was on her way to a week of lobbying in Washington, DC on behalf of the non-profit Moms for America, a national, conservative education advocacy group.
In that post Hawatmeh earnestly says: “Today, reading about 20,000 migrants in Springfield, Ohio, killing dogs, killing cats, ducks in our parks, no accountability. It is our country. Illegals are being placed before American citizens. No accountability for them, but we have to be held accountable if we don’t pay our taxes, if we don’t pay our bills. We have no say as to who our neighbors are now? You want to place illegals in our neighborhood. We have to have a say. Never give up, never give in. Speak up. It’s our America, it’s our country.”
Hawatmeh’s connection to the 19th Congressional District is unclear from any online sources or statements. Nor does she make clear that she resides in the district or the state.
Catalina Lauf
According to an Oct. 2 article by reporter Jacob Ogles on the website Florida Politics, Catalina Lauf of Bonita Springs served in the first Trump administration as special advisor to the US Department of Commerce from December 2018 to July 2019. At that point she founded the Defense of Freedom PAC where she continues serving as executive director.
In 2022 Lauf ran for Congress in Illinois’ 11th Congressional District but lost to Democrat Bill Foster with a total of 43.5 percent to Foster’s 56.5 percent.
In 2020 she lost the Republican congressional primary in a field of seven candidates in District 14 to Jim Oberweis who garnered 25.6 percent of the vote to Lauf’s 20.1 percent. (More about Oberweis below.)
Lauf issued a statement to Florida Politics when she announced her Florida run on Oct. 2, the day after Cawthorn made his announcement.
“Southwest Florida deserves bold, principled leadership — leaders in the mold of Byron Donalds, who stand up fearlessly for our values, and who are champions of President Trump’s America First agenda. I was proud to work for President Trump’s administration and now I’m running to continue that tradition of strength, courage, and service for the people of FL-19.”
As of this writing Lauf was not yet registered as a candidate with the Florida Department of State. She had posted a campaign Facebook page but did not yet have a dedicated campaign website.
On the Facebook page she stated that “Like many Americans, Catalina is concerned with the young socialist progressive wing in Congress.”
Dylan Modarelli
According to his LinkedIn profile, Dylan Modarelli is chief executive officer of Empire Gems in Fort Myers. He lives in Cape Coral and is in his mid-30s. He’s married with one child.
He is originally from North Bergan, New Jersey but does not state on his professional campaign website how long he has lived in Florida. Nor does he mention any prior political or government experience.
Modarelli’s candidacy is registered with the Florida Department of State.
“I come from hardship, raised in a home where giving up was never an option,” he writes. “When I was just five years old, I lost my father to a heroin overdose, leaving my mother to raise me alone while relying on family donations to survive. Those early struggles taught me resilience, empathy, and the belief that our circumstances do not define our future.”
Without providing dates, he states that he served as a police officer (no mention of where), then entered the emerald trade, building a business.
He’s taking a Trumpist/populist approach. As he says on his Facebook campaign page, he’s “pro-life, pro-freedom, pro-guns.”
“I’m ready to fight. I’m tired of the grifters, the career politicians, and the power hungry elites who have forgotten the people they swore to serve,” he says in a video. “Washington has turned into a playground for the connected and the corrupt, while hardworking Americans are left behind. I’m not here to play their games. I’m here to break them. I’m here to stand up for the working man, the struggling families, the seniors, the veterans, and the forgotten communities. We’ve been ignored for too long, and I refuse to sit quietly while they sell out our future. It’s time to send a fighter to Congress who answers to the people, not the lobbyists. This is our fight and I’m just getting started.”
Unlike most of the other candidates, Modarelli has a platform with defined positions on a variety of issues.
Asked in a Ballotpedia questionnaire what areas of public policy he was most passionate about, Modarelli responded, “I’m passionate about protecting animals. I believe no animal should be killed just because it’s unwanted. I stand firmly against euthanizing healthy animals in shelters.” Indeed, on his campaign website he lists ending “kill shelters” as his third most important issue after promoting affordable housing and declaring war on fentanyl.
One particularly noteworthy issue that Modarelli lists is ending private, for-profit prisons. Florida currently operates 12 for-profit prisons and two concentration camps.
As Modarelli states: “The prison system should focus on justice and rehabilitation not corporate profit. I will fight to end for-profit prisons that prioritize filling beds over public safety, turning incarceration into a money-making scheme.” He adds: “It’s time to bring prisons under public control and ensure they serve the people, not shareholders.”
Jim Oberweis
Jim Oberweis, 79, is a veteran politician, with a mixed record of wins and losses in his native Aurora, Illinois.
Prior to politics he worked as a teacher and a financial services advisor before buying and running his family’s dairy, which had a product line of what Oberweis calls “the richest ice cream in the world.”
Oberweis began his political career in 2004 when he ran for the Republican nomination for US Senate but lost. In 2012 when he ran for the Illinois state Senate and won in District 25. He made another bid for the US Senate in 2014 but lost to Democrat Dick Durbin. He returned to the state Senate in 2012, was reelected in 2016 and rose to the position of Minority Whip.
In 2020, Oberweis ran for the Republican nomination in the Illinois 14th Congressional District, the area of Chicago’s western suburbs, centered around Aurora.
In that election he faced Catalina Lauf, who is running in the current District 19 election (see above). In a field of seven candidates, Oberweis beat Lauf, who came in third, with only 20.1 percent of the vote to Oberweis’ 25.6 percent.
However, Oberweis lost in the general election to Democrat Lauren Underwood, whom Oberweis claims stole the election.
“As of election night he had won against his Democrat incumbent opponent and was sent to Washington for New Member Orientation where he met Byron Donalds, also a newly elected Congressman,” states Oberweis’ third-person account of the election on his campaign website. “But when 20,000 previously uncounted mail-in ballots were counted, he had lost. The uncounted ballots were never initialed by an election judge as required under Illinois law but were counted anyway. After 3 days of new member orientation Jim was told he might as well go home because things did not look good.”
Oberweis thought he was permanently done with politics and, as the website puts it: “Jim went home, packed his bags and moved permanently to Bonita Springs where he and wife have owned a condominium for 16 years, and became a full-time Florida resident.”
However, with Donalds’ quest for the governorship, Oberweis decided to try again.
Oberweis is a conservative, Trumpist Republican so most of his positions reflect orthodox Trumpism. However, he does weigh in on the local environment by calling for protection of the Everglades. He says more needs to be done to protect against the polluting runoff from cane sugar processing.
“We need to return the natural southerly flow of water through the Everglades which can help reduce the threat of red tide and provide more fresh drinking water,” he states on his website. “Mother Nature is nonpartisan. Hurricanes bearing down on your home don’t care about your political beliefs. We need to do what we can to mitigate damage from future hurricanes.”
As of publication time, Oberweis had not yet responded to a question about his position on Alligator Alcatraz, which opponents say injures the Everglades’ natural environment. He is listed as a candidate by the Florida Department of State.
Oberweis has also made a major commitment to his campaign with $2 million in personal loans and outside donations that raise his total to $2.12 million.
Mike Pedersen
When most aspirants “jump into the race” it means they’re just announcing that they’re running for office. In May, Mike Pedersen literally jumped out of an airplane and parachuted to earth to make his mark.
It was a smart move. It gave him enough distinction to land a television interview with Dave Elias, political reporter for Gulf Coast News and broke him out of what was then a very small pack. He is registered as a candidate with the Florida Department of State.
Pedersen is a retired US Marine with a 20-year record of active service including 66 combat missions during Operation Desert Storm and deployments all over the world.
He graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1979, which would put his age in the 60s, although this is not confirmed on his website or in answers to questions sent to him by The Paradise Progressive. His wife was born in the Philippines, he has three children and eight grandchildren.
He has lived in Cape Coral for 26 years and worked as a pharmaceutical salesman after his active duty, focusing, he states, “on women’s healthcare across Southwest Florida”—although he doesn’t state among his positions whether he supports women’s right to choose abortion.
His positions are, otherwise, conventionally Trumpist: America first, an unmatched military, tightly restricted elections, protection of the Second Amendment, debt reduction, tight borders, a promise to “fight to protect our kids from radical agendas in the classroom and in sports” and “Continue the DOGE Mission” to achieve government efficiency. He does not list any local issues among his concerns on his website.
Jim Schwartzel
There is no other Republican candidate that is as purely Southwest Florida-born, bred and raised as Jim Schwartzel. A native of the area, he attended Bishop Verot Catholic High School in Fort Myers and Stetson University in DeLand, Florida.
Schwartzel, 49, is a media entrepreneur whom some media outlets refer to as a “mogul.” He announced his candidacy in April and is listed as a candidate by the Florida Department of State.
He’s president of Sun Broadcasting based in Fort Myers, which owns five local radio stations and four television stations. He also owns Gulfshore Life Media, which publishes the magazines Gulfshore Life, Gulfshore Business and The Naples Press. The financial data website Quiver Quantitative puts his net worth at $15.94 million. (Full disclosure: This author writes a monthly, non-political column for The Naples Press.)
Schwartzel is very conservative and does all he can to let the world know it.
This is reflected in his media holdings, which include radio station 92.5 FM Fox News, an all-talk conservative radio station based in Fort Myers.
Another expression of this is the country-western music radio station 93.7 FM, branded as “Trump Country,” whose history provides an interesting snapshot of the Southwest Florida political climate.
On Sept. 16, 2020 the station flipped from a rock and roll format to country-western and renamed itself “Trump Country.” The format lasted only three months. After Trump lost the election, it switched to country-western “Hell Yeah 93.7” under the call letters WHEL. The station went off the air during Hurricane Ian in 2022 and when it returned it was in a Latino current hit format. It then resumed as “Hell Yeah” on October 21, playing contemporary hits. On Inauguration Day 2025 at noon it switched back to calling itself “Trump Country.”
Given his conservative history, it’s no surprise that Schwartzel’s platform is all-out Trumpist. He states that he’s running for Congress “to give President Donald J. Trump the support he needs and to fight for the conservative values that make Southwest Florida strong.” He claims to be anti-career politician and “a straight-talking outsider” who will fight the standard array of MAGA-perceived threats that include “the ruling class of career politicians,” “socialist policies” and “outside political interest groups.”
When it comes to local issues, Schwartzel lists two: water and infrastructure.
On water, he states that he’ll “support common-sense water management policies” but “not the agendas of environmental extremists or special interest groups.”
On roads, he pledges to “push for funding to complete the projects necessary to reduce traffic congestion and enhance safety… .”
Schwartzel has loaned his campaign $1 million, bringing its total to $1.2 million. But while that still trails Oberweis’ total, he expects to surpass it by the end of the year.
To come:
Analyzing where it all stands, what it all means and where it’s all going
A look at Howard Sapp, Democratic candidate
To see previous coverage of Congressional District 19, click here
Liberty lives in light
© 2025 by David Silverberg
The Paradise Progressive 