It’s time for a change–a congressional representative who knows he works for us. If you want a real representative in Washington, vote for Bale Dalton.
We’ve gotten rid of scandal-plagued Cory Mills, but Ryan Elijah would bring more MAGA chaos to our congressional district. Bale Dalton would bring positive change to our pocketbooks and our community.
This election, if you want real change, the choice is clear. You need to vote for Dalton as your congressional representative.
This blog will give you the facts on why Bale Dalton is the clear choice to represent Seminole County in Congress.
Ryan Elijah: “EVERYTHING MAGA”
Ryan Elijah, previously a news anchor, ousted Cory Mills from the Republican ticket in last month’s primary election. Earlier, Donald Trump had endorsed Mills, but after Mills’s loss, Trump changed his tune.
He made his point clear on Truth Social right after the primary. “Ryan stands for EVERYTHING MAGA,” Trump posted. “He has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”
So, what has MAGA brought us?
MAGA Brought Us Another War
Last February, Donald Trump launched an attack on Iran. He assured us his illegal war would be over soon.
It is not over and shows no signs of ending. Trump has attempted an end run around the need for congressional approval, but ceasefires don’t mean these are different short-lived wars.
It is one war, and it is putting America at risk.
This war takes for granted the lives of those who serve, including an Army Reserve captain from Florida who was killed in the conflict. How many more do we need to lose before Congress will insist on an end to this war of choice?
The way to end it is to ensure Democrats win both chambers of Congress and hold the Trump administration accountable for its wanton disregard for American lives.
MAGA Gave Us Higher Gas Prices
Trump’s war in Iran has led directly to a spike in prices at the pump. As predicted, Iran used the Strait of Hormuz as a chokepoint, ensuring less oil gets through.
As an opponent of renewable energy, which could have taken America in the direction of energy independence, Trump has gotten us into this mess. MAGA congressional representatives show no signs of holding him accountable.
MAGA Harms Our Economy with Tariffs
The Yale Budget Lab forecasts that American households will each pay upward of $1,000 for Trump’s tariffs. And with over half of small businesses in America absorbing tariff costs, this policy has harmed American companies’ bottom line too.
Yet Trump has persisted despite the Supreme Court declaring his tariffs unconstitutional. He recently increased tariffs on longtime ally Canada, triggering retaliatory tariffs on American products.
No wonder American voters say tariffs—and their opposition to the harm they cause—are an important reason for their vote in the midterms.
MAGA Increases Inflation
Trump’s tariffs and war in Iran have driven prices up after Biden got inflation under control and made the American economy, according to even the conservative The Economist, “the envy of the world.”
Yet when the Federal Reserve raised the interest rate by a quarter of a percentage point this month, Trump rambled and griped because he can’t admit that his policies have sunk American incomes.
This is the opposite of how you address an affordability crisis.
MAGA Opposes Science
The branch of MAGA known as MAHA sows unwarranted doubt in vaccinations and the scientific method itself.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has spread misinformation about vaccinations that led to preventable measles-related deaths in Samoa, and he refuses to accept the longstanding scientific finding that autism and vaccines are not linked.
Someone who falls in love with a claim and then goes looking for proof long after it’s clear the proof goes the other way is not a scientist: that’s a demagogue.
MAGA Wages Culture Wars
The movement has entrenched us in culture wars that harm the most vulnerable among us.
In Florida, it has led to a near-total abortion ban despite the will of the majority of Florida voters in 2024 to uphold abortion rights.
It has also led to Governor DeSantis’s Stop W.O.K.E. Act, the “Don’t Say Gay” law, and his targeting of a primary engine of economic activity in Central Florida: Disney. All three attacked free speech with taxpayer money.
MAGA’s obsession with policing individuals’ choices led to a fight over marijuana that got so heated that the governor’s wife’s own charity, Hope Florida, was involved in a scheme to transfer $10 million meant for Medicaid recipients—sick children from low-income families—to political action committees that opposed the 2024 amendment that would have legalized recreational marijuana use.
How many more taxpayer dollars are we willing to watch Republican officials fritter away on attacking recreational marijuana use and fighting Mickey Mouse in Orlando?
MAGA Harms Education
MAGA has defunded public schools and instituted book bans. This has been especially devastating in Florida, where DeSantis took over New College of Florida, scrapped its gender studies program, and threw away its books.
MAGA’s threats to teachers and librarians were noted by children’s author Judy Blume, who said, “They are criminalizing teachers and librarians. It’s not just that they’re threatening their jobs, they’re threatening them.”
Florida needs access to education and knowledge. That doesn’t come through menacing those who have answered the call to protect education and knowledge so everyone can learn.
MAGA Threatens Hardworking Americans
MAGA has been gutting the foundations on which we build our lives.
We saw it last year in DOGE, which resulted in cuts to critical care for veterans, slashed funding for cancer research, and leaked Social Security data.
We saw it in the plans the Trump crowd has drawn up for making America into a theocracy: Project 2025.
And less than two years in, Americans are feeling the impact to our economic security and our way of life as a free society.
Ryan Elijah: Out of Touch and Extreme
Trump himself said it: Ryan Elijah is “everything MAGA.”
And so far, Elijah seems to have embraced that.
He has said Trump’s tariffs are “working” and dismissed concerns that businesses and even CEOs have about their impact. Elijah’s own words about Trump were, “You have to trust him.”
He also said the American economy is “in a great spot now.” This is in a year when a Gallup poll showed “a record 55% [of Americans] now saying their financial situation is getting worse.”
Elijah also supports Trump’s illegal war with Iran, glibly saying that his potential constituents “understand there is a cost of freedom.” We are talking about a war that has worsened Americans’ ability to make ends meet and has taken American lives—more than the Pentagon has reported. We are talking about yet another “forever war” in the Middle East—in this case a clear war of choice.
As if one war wasn’t enough, Elijah is also leaning into the culture wars. He has said that no elective abortions should be allowed and that so few pregnancies are life-threatening that abortions to protect women’s lives are a “moot point.” And on his own website’s endorsements page is Mathew Staver of Liberty Counsel, designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group.
This is at a time when we need our elected representatives to focus on shoring up the shaky ground we’re trying to build our lives on.
For all of us, that ground has been hollowed out by tariffs, inflation, an unnecessary war, and a mismanaged economy. And for some of us, that ground is hollowed out even more as our so-called leaders threaten our healthcare and our freedom to live our lives.
We need a representative who will shore up this ground so our hard work in building our lives can do us some good. What we don’t need is another representative plagued by ethical issues and a lack of transparency.
Ethics Issues—Already
Ryan Elijah already has an ethics complaint filed against him. The complaint filed with the House Ethics Committee observes that two of Elijah’s accounts—one worth over a million dollars—were not properly itemized.
This means that voters are left in the dark about where Elijah’s financial interests lie.
Other holdings of Elijah’s were itemized, allowing voters to see what the candidate has invested in—and showing an awareness of how to appropriately disclose investments.
As End Citizens United President Tiffany Muller put it, “Ryan is denying voters the ability to identify potential conflicts of interest and raising serious questions about what he doesn’t want them to know.”
At least Cory Mills was actually in office before getting a complaint sent to the House Ethics Committee.
The Carpetbagger Candidate
Before Ryan Elijah entered the race to become the next congressional representative of Florida’s seventh congressional district, he ran for office in Indiana.
Back in 2010, he said of himself, “I’ve lived in this community my entire life with the exception of the five years I was in Florida.”
That community was Fort Wayne, Indiana—not Seminole County, Florida. And those five years in Florida were spent working in Jacksonville—again, not Seminole County.
In that earlier congressional run, he also said, “I feel it is important to hold the torch for Hoosier values.”
Going to Congress is clearly a longstanding aspiration of Elijah’s. What is less clear is why we should expect him to be loyal to Florida’s Congressional District 7 when Donald Trump clearly presumes his loyalty and Elijah has done nothing to counter this.
Vote for the Candidate Who Supports Us
Seminole County needs an economy that works for us—not a congressional representative that calls it “great” when Florida has become the worst state for renters and almost half of Floridians struggle to afford basic necessities.
Seminole County needs the price of gas to come down from its jump of over 40% since Trump started his ill-conceived and ill-executed war with Iran.
Seminole County needs access to affordable healthcare—and respect for the scientists who have made that healthcare possible in the first place.
And Seminole County needs a representative who understands the role of government in supporting public life—not another MAGA lackey who sees his own constituents building their lives and tears the floor out from under their feet, whether through DOGE, Medicaid cuts, or Project 2025.
In 2026, we need candidates who know we can’t keep going in a failing direction. We need change.
And Bale Dalton will help us turn things around.
Dalton: For Affordability and Accountable Leadership
Dalton is a veteran. Having served in the Navy and being deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, he understands the cost of war and knows better than to take the lives of American military members for granted.
Dalton is from Central Florida. He knows Floridians are getting squeezed at the grocery store, at the gas pump, and by property insurers.
To make Florida affordable again, Dalton will work to stop Trump’s illegal tariffs, oppose monopolies, increase the federal minimum wage, and support labor unions. With Florida’s property insurance scandal making headlines, Dalton will fight to hold these companies accountable.
Dalton also supports affordable healthcare; his platform includes protecting Medicaid and Medicare and lowering premiums under the Affordable Care Act. Other priorities include negotiating drug prices and opposing surprise medical bills.
Dalton is a refreshing change from the culture wars MAGA has bogged us down in. He supports the right of patients to seek medical care apart from a hovering federal government, whether those patients are pregnant women making decisions about their own bodies or families making decisions about gender-affirming care for their children, together with those children’s pediatricians.
He also has the courage to come before the voters and debate his opponent, Ryan Elijah. As of this publication, Elijah is still refusing to debate.
That’s not surprising if you don’t think your ideas can stand up to voters’ scrutiny.
This election, vote for a change for the better. Vote for the candidate who will make sure everyone has a fair chance at building a good life. Vote for Bale Dalton for your congressional representative.