Never Bet Against Trump: FL-19 Now Belongs To Catalina Lauf
FL Gulf News shifts its final endorsement after President Trump makes the defining call—but Lauf must end the bogus “liberal” attacks against Jim Schwartzel and unite Southwest Florida Republicans.
LUTHMANN NOTE: This endorsement changed because the race changed. Jim Schwartzel remains a real conservative, a Southwest Florida institution, and a man whose supporters deserve respect. But President Trump has now made the defining choice in the Republican primary. I have supported Donald Trump since the Golden Escalator, and I will not pretend his judgment is just another line on an endorsement list. With the President’s endorsement, Catalina Lauf should win—and we expect she will. Her first duty after winning must be unity: end the false liberal smears, recognize Schwartzel’s contributions, and bring his voters into the America First coalition. Victory without reconciliation would waste the mandate Trump just gave her. This piece is “Never Bet Against Trump,” first available on FL Gulf News.
By Richard Luthmann
The Endorsement That Ends The Argument
(FORT MYERS, FLORIDA) — The most important rule in modern Republican politics is simple: never bet against Donald Trump.
President Trump has endorsed Catalina Lauf in the August 18 Republican primary for Florida’s 19th Congressional District. That announcement does not merely add another name to Lauf’s endorsement page. It changes the race’s center of gravity, scrambles every campaign plan, and gives Republican voters the one signal that outweighs all others: the judgment of the leader who remade the GOP.
This is not political superstition. A peer-reviewed study of contested 2022 Republican Senate and gubernatorial primaries found that Trump-endorsed candidates were already competitive before he intervened—but his endorsement was then associated with a 13-percentage-point increase in both polling share and fundraising share that endured through primary day. Trump himself said in June that his endorsements had produced 259 primary victories over two years with “almost no losses.”
The first is published political-science research. The second claim is American political legend, with numbers further cementing Trump as the G.O.A.T.
Either way, the practical lesson is unmistakable. Campaign cash, local endorsements, and television matter. Ground organizations also matter. But when Trump enters a Republican primary, his endorsement becomes the defining event around which everything else must reorganize.
FL Gulf News previously preferred Jim Schwartzel based on his Southwest Florida roots, business record, and conservative-media bona fides. We still respect those strengths. But the race that existed before Trump’s decision no longer exists. Schwartzel cannot realistically overcome the endorsement without asking Republican voters to conclude that Trump got this choice wrong.
We will not make that bet.
Never Bet Against Trump: Why We Trust Trump’s Choice
Trusting Trump’s judgment is not blind faith in an unknown candidate. Lauf has a record that explains why the president chose her.
Lauf served in Trump’s first administration at the Department of Commerce, working inside an economic team focused on American industry and domestic production. She is the daughter of a Guatemalan immigrant mother and a small-business owner father. Her campaign says she later co-founded a successful children’s health company with her sister. She now lives with her husband in Bonita Springs.
Her political résumé was built initially in Illinois, where she ran for Congress in 2020 and became the Republican nominee in the 11th District in 2022. That history made the carpetbagger criticism fair game when she entered FL-19. Trump’s endorsement does not erase geography, but it answers the more important Republican-primary question: whom does the president trust to carry America First into Congress?
Lauf’s platform is recognizably Trump Republican. She supports completing the border wall, deporting criminal illegal aliens, confronting cartels, restoring American manufacturing, expanding domestic energy, and cutting federal regulation. She embraces the MAHA movement, demands transparency involving Big Pharma and the FDA, and promises to pursue federal support for I-75 improvements, water quality, Everglades restoration, and hurricane-resilient infrastructure.
Her campaign also has real financial strength. Federal Election Commission records show nearly $1.48 million in receipts through June 30, without candidate loans. She entered the final stretch with national conservative backing, campaign discipline, and a clear generational argument.
Now she has the endorsement that defines Republican primaries.
FL Gulf News trusts President Trump’s judgment and endorses Catalina Lauf for FL-19.
Jim Schwartzel Is Not A Liberal
That endorsement, however, does not give Catalina Lauf or anyone around her a license to rewrite Jim Schwartzel’s record.
Jim Schwartzel is no liberal. In 2023, Florida’s nonpartisan First Amendment Foundation presented him with its Pete Weitzel Friend of the First Amendment Award after he became the first conservative news-station owner to publicly oppose legislation that would have made it easier for nefarious bad-faith litigants to use weaponized justice and lawfare to sue their conservative critics into silence. Imagine human filth like George Soros or Roy Singham dropping millions to silence local groups that vocally oppose transgender lunacy, men in women’s sports, or radical Islamist jihad ideology.
Nor is he an ally of WOKE gender ideology or some faceless appendage of a “Fake News, Big Pharma establishment machine.” Those attacks are not supported by the evidence, and repeating them after victory would be both dishonest and politically stupid.
Schwartzel is Southwest Florida to the core: a local businessman, employer, and conservative-media operator associated with Sun Broadcasting and Republican talk radio. His campaign platform supports President Trump, border enforcement, tax and regulatory relief, constitutional liberties, family values, and resistance to woke ideology. He has built companies, created jobs, and defended the community he now seeks to represent.
That does not mean Schwartzel ran a perfect campaign or deserved immunity from hard questions. It means criticism must remain tethered to facts. His local media holdings, self-funding, and business decisions were legitimate subjects of scrutiny. Calling him a liberal or implying that he supports transgender ideology was a caricature, not an argument.
The same is true of his supporters. They include hard-working business owners, conservative families, native sons and daughters, veterans, broadcasters and civic leaders who have invested decades in Southwest Florida. They do not become RINOs because President Trump chose someone else. They remain part of the Republican coalition Catalina Lauf will need after August 18.
Trump’s endorsement makes Lauf the overwhelming favorite. It also gives her a responsibility larger than winning. She must correct the record, reject unsupported smears, and show Schwartzel’s voters that victory will not be followed by contempt.
Never Bet Against Trump: Win It—Then Unite It
Republican primaries are family arguments with real stakes. They can be fierce, personal, and unforgiving. But when the voters decide, the nominee must leave the battlefield with a larger army—not a pile of insulted conservatives nursing grudges.
That work begins now for Catalina Lauf.
She should say plainly that Jim Schwartzel is a conservative patriot, a defender of the First Amendment, and a serious Southwest Florida businessman. She need not retract legitimate policy disagreements or pretend the campaign was gentle. She should simply retire the “liberal” fiction and make clear that Schwartzel’s supporters have a place in the coalition President Trump expects her to build.
Schwartzel should meet that gesture with equal seriousness. Losing Trump’s endorsement is not humiliation; it is the decisive reality of today’s Republican Party. His community standing, businesses, and conservative media platforms will remain important after the votes are counted. He can help ensure that FL-19 sends an America First member to Congress with a united party behind her.
The rest of the field still appears on the ballot, and voters retain the final word. Yet political analysis requires recognizing when the central fact has changed. Trump’s endorsement has changed it. The statistical record says his support can move polling and fundraising by double digits. The political record says Republican primary voters view his judgment as the movement’s strongest seal of approval.
Our prior preference for Schwartzel was sincere. So is our revised conclusion.
Never bet against Donald Trump. Trust his judgment. Nominate Catalina Lauf. Then demand that she honor Southwest Florida conservatives who fought for another good candidate—and unite every faction for November.
FL Gulf News endorses Catalina Lauf for Congress in Florida’s 19th District.
