Florida Values Voter Guide

Florida Faith · Freedom · America First
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Scoring method · 2026 Florida cycle · Not an official ballot

How JesusVoter scores Florida candidates

If you’ve opened a name on the Florida Values Voter Guide and thought, “okay, but why is this person’s Christian number so high and that other one’s almost nothing?” — that’s this conversation. We sit down with the public record and we score three things. Always the same math: 45 Christian + 35 Constitution + 20 GOP = 100. Same method you’ll see on the home guide’s Scoring Method tab. We’re not inventing a new system per race.

We’re the neighbors who did the homework — see About — not the Division of Elections and not a party office. These numbers are values judgments from public sources. They’re not poll averages, and they’re not a prediction of November 3.

Why it’s 45, then 35, then 20

Christian (45) is first on purpose. This guide exists because church voters kept asking a simple question: does this person’s public record line up with faith-and-family policy? The heaviest single signal is public faith in Jesus — campaign language, church-centered events, Scripture used as more than a slogan. We also score pro-life positions, religious liberty, parental rights, marriage and family, and opposition to gender ideology in schools and sports.

A long conservative voting record without a Christ-named public witness can still score well. It will not outrun someone who both votes and campaigns on those Gospel-aligned items. That’s why James Fishback’s 41 still sits above Byron Donalds’s 36 in the Republican governor field even though Donalds holds the formal Trump endorsement and a 20 GOP score. Fishback was 44 on the Jesus trail alone; we docked three points for how he campaigned — more on that below.

Constitution (35) is limited government, secure borders, skepticism of endless foreign wars, free enterprise, original meaning, fiscal restraint, and health freedom. We still read the Constitution as written. On older cards we labeled the same idea “paleo.” We changed the word so you can see the idea: liberty under the U.S. Constitution, not party branding. Health freedom / MAHA lives here because coercive medical and food policy is a government-power question, not a party-logo question. When the public record shows a real MAHA or medical-freedom commitment — a MAHA Institute endorsement, a state MAHA Commission role, Stand for Health Freedom, an anti-mandate platform — the Constitution number can rise. The 🥗 badge is the filter. The Constitution bar is where the points live.

GOP (20) is third, and we mean that. It measures Republican registration and nomination, platform and institutional alignment, and conservative party-line records. We’re honest about party. We don’t worship it. A Republican who campaigns as an outsider against GOP institutions can run high on Christian and Constitution and still sit lower on GOP — Fishback is 15 GOP next to Donalds at 20.

A Democrat doesn’t get a courtesy mid-score on Christian or GOP just so the card looks polite. Endorsement by gay / lesbian / Pride / DEI / woke / progressive identity groups counts against (Christian 0). No such endorsement, and no Jesus comments, is slightly better (Christian 3–5, usually 4) — still not mid-teens. A Democrat is 0–2 GOP (usually 0). Constitution has no floor; DEI/woke governance endorsements debit that bar too. David Jolly is 4 / 5 / 1. Alex Vindman is 4 / 3 / 0. Zero is allowed.

How you fight still counts

Church voters asked us a fair question: if someone names Jesus and then campaigns mean, does that sit on the Christian bar? Yes — slightly. We are not scoring charm. We are scoring whether the public fruit looks like the Lord’s servant.

2 Timothy 2:24–25 (ESV): “And the Lord’s servant must not be quarrelsome but kind to everyone, able to teach, patiently enduring evil, correcting his opponents with gentleness.”

2 Corinthians 10:5 (ESV): “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.”

Those two verses belong together. Demolish the argument. Don’t become quarrelsome. A hard line on abortion, gender ideology, or a bad bill is not a dock. Mocking a person, race-baiting an opponent, or closing a race with a grave unsubstantiated personal accusation is. When that fruit is opened in named public coverage, we take 1 to 3 points off Christian. Isolated clip: usually −1. A pattern, or “very mean”: −2 or −3. The dock is always slight. It does not wipe a Jesus trail to zero. It does not move Constitution or GOP. We do not hunt the whole state for meanness; we apply it when the page is open.

James Fishback is the worked example. The Christ-first campaign is still why he leads this Republican field on that bar. Florida Politics (August 2026) opened a quarrelsome close — an unsubstantiated trafficking claim against Byron Donalds that the Justice Department denied, plus “slave,” “DEI Republican,” and “By'rone.” That is why the card is 41 / 35 / 15 A, not 44 / 35 / 15. 41 is still high. 44 would have pretended the how did not matter.

We’d rather look thin than look fake

Honesty over volume. We’d rather publish a thin, labeled score than a polished fake one. Front-of-field statewide and mayor races get the deep dig when the trail exists. The rest stay at the depth we actually did. No invented 20 / 18 / 10 “mid-band” dressed up as research.

Orange County mayor is still the worked example for empty faith trails: Chris Messina is 38 / 32 / 19 (89, a B). Mayra Uribe, Tiffany Moore Russell, and Stephanie Murphy sit near-zero Christian because we opened no Jesus trail. Russell is 0 after a Rainbow Democrats endorsement. Those three totals are F on the letter scale. We didn’t park them in the mid-teens to look nice.

What the letter on a card means

The letter is the 100-point values total — Christian + Constitution + GOP. It is not a report card on how hard we looked, and it is not a moral grade.

If we have not finished a numeric score, the card says Scores coming soon. That watermark is not an F. An F means we scored them and the total is 59 or lower.

Ashley B. Moody’s Senate card is 42 / 28 / 20 — 90, an A. The numbers are high because the former Florida AG record is public: pro-life enforcement, parental rights, religious-liberty litigation. Alex Vindman is 4 / 3 / 0 — 7, an F. That is a finished look at a Democratic Senate candidate whose public brand is national security and opposition to Trump, not a Jesus / GOP grid. An F here is the total, not “we skipped Democrats.”

Badges aren’t extra points — with one Constitution exception

Trump, DeSantis, Musk, and MAHA badges are callouts. They let you filter the list. They do not add 5 or 10 phantom points on top of 45 / 35 / 20. A candidate can wear three badges and still lose the Christian bar to someone with none. Rachel Rodriguez is 38 Christian with no Trump / DeSantis / Musk / MAHA badges on the card; several institutional Republicans with badges sit below her on that bar.

MAHA is the exception that isn’t a second math column. The 🥗 badge itself is still a badge. The extra effect is that a real health-freedom record is also a Constitution input. Paul Renner’s 33 Constitution and Jay Collins’s 32 include that MAHA / health-freedom evidence — Stand for Health Freedom and the Florida MAHA Commission, respectively. A conventional farmer, or a candidate who says “healthy kids” in a slogan, doesn’t get the badge or the Constitution lift. The longer badge essay is callout badges explained.

Where the numbers come from

Typical sources are Ballotpedia, county Supervisor of Elections lists, campaign sites, named news, questionnaires, and recorded votes. A church-membership line in a bio isn’t a 40 Christian score. Party on the voter file, by itself, isn’t a 20 GOP. If you email a public page to hello@jesusvoter.com, we’ll open it. A private story isn’t a source.

Here’s the same rubric on names you can actually open:

Before you treat any of those numbers as a voting plan, pull the official style: how to read a Florida sample ballot and how to vote in the 2026 primary. Florida’s primary was August 18, 2026. The next statewide date is November 3, 2026.