A right-wing extremist who once cheered the prospect of executing gay people just won a seat in the Florida Legislature.

Republican Marshall Rawson won 68.15 percent of the vote in Florida House District 10, easily beating Democrat Merrillee Malwitz Jipson in deep red North Florida. His victory was widely expected in the heavily Republican district. But in August, Rawson won the GOP primary for the open seat in a surprise victory over Chase Brannan, the son of retiring Florida Rep. Chuck Brannan.

Some of his extremist rhetoric had been reported in local outlets like Clay News & Views, which in January spotlighted a 2023 post on Twitter, now X, in which Rawson shared a report on Uganda charging men with “aggravated homosexuality.” Responding to the prospect of the men facing the death penalty, Rawson wrote, “This is how you would run the pervs and miscreants out of Florida.”

Florida Politics reported on Rawson’s lengthy involvement with the League of the South, which has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center since 2000. He also criticized the celebration of Martin Luther King Jr. Day and posted that “taking old dead communist heroes of the past and dressing them up as Christian Conservatives isn’t conservatism, it’s defeatism.”

Seems there's a new George Wallace in the south.