Brian Mast

Mast first considered running for office while recovering from his injuries at Walter Reed Medical Center.[2] It was reported in May 2015 that Mast was considering a run for Congress.[16]

On June 8, 2015, Mast announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination United States House of Representatives in Florida's 18th congressional district.[17] Mast faced five opponents in the August 30, 2016, primary; he won with 38% of the vote.[18] Mast faced Democratic businessman Randy Perkins in the November 2016 general election.[18]

During the 2015-2016 election campaign, Mast's largest donors were Duty Free Americas (owned by the pro-Israel Falic family), NextGen Management (a condo property firm), and Superior Foods (frozen foods).[19]

Mast won the November 8, 2016, general election with 53% of the vote.[20]

In 2016, Mast was briefly linked with World Patent Marketing, a company the Federal Trade Commission would shut down as an invention promotion scam. World Patent Marketing donated money to Mast's campaign fund and said in a press release that he sat on their advisory board. Mast claimed no knowledge of being given a position on the board and said he only had a couple encounters with members of the company.[21]

In 2018, Anthony Bustamante, a campaign consultant who had worked on Mast's 2016 campaign, told The Wall Street Journal that he had used data hacked from the Democratic National Committee by Guccifer 2.0, a front for Russia's GRU military intelligence service, to adjust Mast's campaign strategy.[22] The hacked data had been leaked by Guccifer 2.0 to the HelloFLA blog.[23]

On April 25, 2018, physician Mark Freeman announced a primary challenge to Mast, focusing on his promise to "defend the Second Amendment" and be an "unwavering partner" to President Trump. Freeman called Mast an "establishment candidate" and complained about Mast's shift on gun control issues after the Parkland school shooting.[24]

Mast defeated Freeman in the Republican primary and moved onto a general election battle against Democratic nominee Lauren Baer, an attorney and foreign policy expert who served as an official in the Obama Administration. Mast received 54% of the vote in the general election, defeating Baer.[25]

During the 2017-2018 election campaign, Mast's largest donors were Duty Free Americas (as in the 2016 campaign) and Amway/Alticor (run by the DeVos family).[26] Between March and June 2018,[27] Mast's campaign received thousands of dollars from Soviet-born Igor Fruman, one of two business associates of Rudy Giuliani who would later face charges of violating federal campaign finance laws. After this allegedly illegal contribution was discovered and reported on by the press, Mast's spokesman said he would disgorge the funds to the Treasury Department,[28] but less than two weeks later Mast would say, "I think we donated it to charity."[29]

Mast ran for the seat again in the 2020 election, going up against Democrat Pam Keith. In August 2020 he apologized for what he called "disgusting and inappropriate jokes" that he made on Facebook in 2009 and 2011.[30]

Mast participating in an overflight assessment with the Coast Guard during Hurricane Irma

Mast was sworn in on January 3, 2017. He is a member of the Republican Main Street Partnership[31] and the Climate Solutions Caucus.[32]

After voting in favor of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, his constituents rated him at a 40 percent approval rating and 45 percent said they were disappointed with his work in Congress.[33]

In May 2018, the Associated Press reported that Mast was under consideration by the Trump administration to become the next secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.[34]

• Committee on Foreign Affairs
  • Subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa
  • Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade
• Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
  • Subcommittee on Coast Guard and Maritime Transportation
  • Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings and Emergency Management
  • Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment

Mast believes abortion should be illegal except in cases where the woman's life is at risk or in cases of rape or incest.[15]

In April 2018, Mast said he would probably vote for legislation to reduce support for sugar farmers, who under the then current Farm Bill were protected by fixed minimum prices, by limits on imports and on domestic production, and by government loans to sugar growers. "I expect I'll be supporting it when it comes up for a vote next week," Mast said of the Sugar Policy Modernization Act, "because it's important to the community I represent, and our waterways". The proposed act, reported TCPalm, "would make sugar import quotas more flexible and protect taxpayers from government-funded buyouts of surplus sugar". Mast said he would "probably be the only representative in the history of this district to vote against the sugar industry".[39] That said, Mast also accepted over $15,000 in campaign donations from the executives at Florida Crystals (sugar company) and the Fanjul family that owns the company.[40]

In December 2020, Mast was one of only five House Republicans to vote for the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act.[41] The act aimed to "correct the historical injustices of failed drug policies that have disproportionately impacted communities of color"; it included provisions to remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act, impose a federal tax on cannabis products, and use the proceeds of the tax to fund restorative justice programs.[42]

In June 2016, Mast said he supported Donald Trump "unanimously and wholeheartedly" in the 2016 presidential election. After the Billy Bush tape became public, he called Donald Trump's remarks "inexcusable and disgusting".[43] In February 2017, he voted against a resolution that would have directed the House to request ten years of Trump's tax returns, which would then have been reviewed by the House Ways and Means Committee in a closed session.[44]

On December 18, 2019, Mast voted against both articles of impeachment against Trump. Of the 195 Republicans who voted, all voted against both impeachment articles.

Mast believes it was a mistake for the US Supreme Court to get involved with the same-sex marriage issue.[15]

Mast wrote an opinion piece in The New York Times in support of the Second Amendment right to bear arms, but "it does not guarantee that every civilian can bear any and all arms."[45][46]

Mast supports a ban on assault weapons in the United States, citing his military background—"I cannot support the primary weapon I used to defend our people being used to kill the children I swore to defend."[45][46][47][48]

Mast rejects the idea that the Second Amendment protects the rights of civilians to bear "any and all" arms. Following the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, Mast announced his support for the following policies: prohibiting the sale of assault and tactical firearms without confiscating such weapons that are already owned, ensuring that all firearm purchasers undergo a background check, improving background checks, banning the sale of gun accessories that enhance the firing rate of weapons, such as bump stocks, preventing those who have been detained for mental illnesses from purchasing firearms, ensuring that those on the Terror Watch List cannot purchase firearms, and placing anyone who makes threats of violence against schools on an FBI watch list for "a long time".[45][46][47][48]

Mast also supports conducting further research on gun violence, which is currently prohibited in some ways by federal law.[45]

Mast has blamed violent video games and violent movies as at least partly responsible for school shootings.[49] In March 2017, Mast voted in favor of the Veterans Second Amendment Protection Act.[50] The measure passed the House of Representatives, but ultimately stalled in the Senate.

During 2015–2016, Mast accepted US$4,950 in campaign donations from the NRA's Political Victory Fund.[51]

Mast is in favor of repealing the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). On May 4, 2017, he voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act and pass the American Health Care Act.[52][53]

In June 2018, commenting on the Trump administration family separation policy, Mast said: "It is our duty as an American government to deal compassionately with any child from any nation just as it is the responsibility of foreign families seeking asylum in the U.S. to choose only legal means to enter our nation so they can avoid family disruption. I am confident this process will be improved." Citing his own Mexican grandparents, he said, "The way that they got to work, the way that they assimilated to the American way of life and became a part of our system is not what we're seeing across the board."[54]

In June 2018, a volunteer for the Democratic Party of Martin County who was angry about the Trump administration's immigration policy, was arrested after threatening to kill Mast's children.[55] The first trial in the case ended in a mistrial in April 2019.[56]

Mast said he would support a Republican proposal to cut U.S. funding to the United Nations.[5]

Mast was not an admirer of Obama's Middle East policy. "ISIS is as strong as it is because of a lack of US leadership," he said in 2016 "ISIS could have been defeated at the time of the Arab Spring if we had sent in special operations forces. What's being done now is too little too late. It's going to require an all-out military effort. The only way to guarantee peace is to make the enemy surrender."[15]

Mast views Obama's Iran nuclear deal as a betrayal by the US of its own national security as well as that of Israel, Jordan, and other regional allies. "The deal has aligned us with a Shia regime, which is just enabling extremism. This is going to make it very hard to get Sunni regimes to align with us, and Putin is now the go-to player in Syria with his alliance with Assad," he said in 2016.[15]

Mast is "a vocal supporter of Israel and Israelis", reported The Times of Israel during his 2016 campaign. "If anyone was lobbing rockets into the US, guys like me would be sent to kill them, and Americans would applaud us," he said.[15]

Mast, who sits on the House Veterans Affairs Committee, was the first Member of Congress to open an office inside a federal agency. The office in question, which was opened in 2018, was inside the West Palm Beach Veterans Affairs facility. In 2018 he introduced a House bill that would make it easier for other House members to do the same.[57] But in 2019, the Department of Veterans Affairs would evict Representative Mast from the West Palm Beach office.[58] Mast sent the VA Secretary Robert Wilkie a letter of complaint regarding the eviction.[59]

In October 2017, Mast voted against the original version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 due to "out of control" federal spending, fear of the national debt growing, and a desire to see lower tax rates with loopholes closed.[60][61] In December 2017, he voted in favor of the final version of the bill.[62] He says the bill "provides a lot of confidence to a lot of people" and is "a great moment for our country and our community".[63][33]