Some believe there’s a civil war brewing on the right. Ideas once considered fringe are no longer confined to the online sphere, and now they’re starting to affect Republican politics in the real world.

Enter James Fishback, the 31-year-old venture capitalist running for Florida governor. He launched his campaign in November to challenge Byron Donalds — the candidate Trump endorsed — in the race to succeed Ron DeSantis, who is about to finish his second term.

Before running, Fishback was associated with the more “mainstream” Republican Party, appearing on Vivek Ramaswamy’s podcast and writing a few opinion pieces for The Free Press. On the campaign trail, however, he’s shifted starkly away from his old views and his former colleagues to embrace what he describes as a “Florida First” agenda.

His policy proposals range from conventional conservatism to populism: banning AI data centers, charging foreign students $1 million in tuition, and cancelling state contracts with companies that employ H-1B visa holders. Most notably, he appears to be courting Nick Fuentes supporters, AKA “The Groypers,” who frequently show up to his campaign stops.

A year ago, a candidate who didn’t rebuke a perceived association with Fuentes would have been dead on arrival. In contrast: at a recent campaign stop, Fishback (briefly) donned a supporter’s Fuentes hat.

I interviewed Fishback to get a broader sense of his campaign and the emerging split on the right.

The following Q&A draws from two interviews with Fishback. I’ve grouped his remarks by topic and edited them for clarity.

— Evan Milenko

Evan Milenko: Why are you running for governor?

James Fishback: I’m running for governor because I’m the only candidate with a Florida first, America first vision that addresses the number one problem that my state is facing, which is affordability. Not in some vague sense. Affordability is literally existential. If you can’t buy a home, you can’t get married. If you can’t get married, you can’t have kids. If you can’t have kids, what’s the point? And so I view homeownership, being able to pay your property taxes, all of that as connected to a much bigger question of: can we even afford to exist and to raise our families and to live out the arc of the American dream? And my core belief is that the American dream is reserved for Americans. Not people who got here three weeks ago and have a Temporary Protected Status, not people who showed up here on an H-1B visa and stole a job from an American. America is for Americans and Florida for Floridians, and that’s what I’m running on.

Your politics are different from that of conservatives like Vivek and Byron Donalds, who you’re running against, and it seems emblematic of the split we’re seeing in the right. How would you define these different factions? Is MAGA itself splitting?