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Itā€™s the day before spring, but in Naples, Florida, a summer-strength sun is searing a regional park as flags flap and music pounds. The event is Patriot Fest 2022, a country concert, county fair, and far-right rally rolled into one.

Some 400 people in ā€œLetā€™s talk Covidā€ shirts and MAGA hats have paid up to $150 to attend, lured by promised headliner Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who never materializes. But for now, warmed up by conservative rocker Ted Nugent, the crowd welcomes the eventā€™s next speaker: Francis Alfred Oakes III.

Widely known as Alfie, the local farm and grocery magnate is 53, with broad shoulders and touches of gray in his close-cropped hair. Alfie is often clad in a short-sleeved polo shirt, the near-Ā­uniform of the region. Todayā€™s version is emblazoned with an upside-down American flag, a symbol of distress.

ā€œI want to get behind people that have backbone,ā€ he roars. ā€œItā€™s the only way weā€™re going to take back this country. Itā€™s the only chance! School board is just a little microcosm of the same 535ā€ā€”i.e., Congressā€”ā€œthat are making reckless decisions.ā€ A chant rises from the sweating crowd: ā€œAlfie! Alfie! Alfie!ā€

To admirersā€”17,000 congregate on his various Facebook pagesā€”Alfie is a godsend, a fearless, truth-telling patriot. His screeds are met with thanks and praise. ā€œNaples is blessed to have a Man of God stand up against evil,ā€ one fan gushed over Alfieā€™s defiance of local mask mandates.

Detractors disagree. ā€œAlfie Oakes is a cancer on Southwest Florida,ā€ says Cindy Banyai, a Democratic congressional candidate who protested outside Patriot Fest. ā€œHeā€™s chosen to mix politics, business, and the quest for celebrity in a way that can only be a detriment to our community.ā€

Alfieā€™s political and online presence is conspiracy-promoting, fanatically anti-vaccine, and ardently Trumpist. Thereā€™s no evidence that he financially supported the ex-president, but Alfie says he spoke to Trump on the day in December 2020 when Ivanka visited Alfieā€™s farms to box holiday donations.

Alfie firmly believes in the Big Lie and that Covid is part of a globalist conspiracy to enrich corporate overlords, destroy small businesses, and enable a New World Order. When I noted to him earlier this year that 900,000 Americans had died of Covid, he responded, ā€œCome on, you donā€™t believe that!ā€

His empire, encompassing three markets, more than 1,800 farm acres, greenhouses, and aquaponics facilities, as well as wholesale, packaging, and transportation operations, employs about 3,200 workers. Between 2018 and 2021, it won $70 million in contracts with the US Defense, Justice, and Agriculture departments. (Alfie says he sold the relevant units after Biden required additional Covid precautions for contractors.)

In an effort to reshape local politics, heā€™s funded Floridaā€™s Conservative Voice, an online news channel, and created the Citizens Awake Now (CAN) political action committee to back his preferred candidates in state and local elections. Itā€™s a strategy most famously put forth by Steve Bannon, the former Trump adviser. ā€œWeā€™re taking this back village by village,ā€ Bannon said in a June 2021 podcast, ā€œwhere the energy is taking these school boards back…people signing up to throw out the GOP establishment.ā€

As Alfie expounded a few months later, ā€œIf they try to steal the next election, the ā€™22 elections, Iā€™m all in. We donā€™t want to talk about what that is…I have enough guns to put in every single employeeā€™s hands. I hope it never gets there.ā€

Alfie was 5 when he started at his fatherā€™s produce market. He began selling goods off of a truck at 15, and opened his first stand at 18. Today, his masterpiece is Seed to Table, a 75,000-square-foot megamarket stocked with field-fresh produce from Alfieā€™s nearby farms, complete with a two-story wine market and bar, and a wide assortment of restaurants, cafes, and food kiosks.

Itā€™s also an enormous event space and MAGA meccaā€”ā€œa shrine to Trump and Trumpism,ā€ says Florida Gulf Coast University political scientist Peter Bergersonā€”where Alfie has hosted Michael Flynn, Roger Stone, and Naples residents Newt and Callista Gingrich. Far-right pundit Charlie Kirk, a personal favorite of Alfie, made a visit. Nugent also played in April 2021, testing positive for Covid a week later. Joe Biden photos have been placed in bathroom urinals.

Alfieā€™s political views first became prominent with an August 2018 Facebook post bemoaning that Democrats were ā€œmorphing into all out socialism.ā€ But things really heated up in early 2020, shortly after Seed to Table officially opened and pandemic lockdowns began. Alfieā€™s response was to dismiss Covid as a ā€œshamā€ā€”despite a phone call with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) set up to convince Alfie otherwise. He threw antiā€“mask mandate rallies and sued Collier County and its commissioners for trying to enforce theirs.

At Seed to Table, Alfie posted signs calling three pro-mandate commissioners ā€œsocialistsā€ and depicting them in Nazi-esque military helmets. Commissioners who voted against the mandate got Uncle Sam hats. (None of the officials would speak for this article.)

Shortly after George Floydā€™s May 2020 murder, Alfie posted a Facebook screed calling him a ā€œdisgraceful career criminal, thief, drug addict, drug dealer and ex-con who…spent his last days passing around fake 20s to store owners.ā€ Black Lives Matter demonstrators subsequently picketed Seed to Table, and the neighboring Lee County school district abruptly canceled a lunch contract with Oakes Farms worth more than $5 million. (Alfie sued, and litigation is ongoing.) He also says he lost $20ā€“$30 million of business with Market Basket, a New England chain.

Alfieā€™s stridency made him a hero to local Trumpers, and in August, he handily unseated a long-standing member of the Collier County GOPā€™s executive committee.

When Biden was elected, Alfie refused to accept it, posting that once ā€œthe overwhelming amount of fraud has been proven,ā€ Biden would ā€œspend the remaining years of his life…back in his basement or perhaps in prison.ā€ By September 2021, Alfie had taken up the fringe cause of auditing Floridaā€™s results, going on Alex Jonesā€™ Infowars to offer Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis a $100,000 contribution if he would sit down and hear out his argument for examining a contest that everyone agrees Trump won. The governor never took him up. Fellow Republican Christy McLaughlin, a congressional candidate and county party official, worried that the offer could harm DeSantisā€™ reelection campaign. In a TikTok video, she argued, ā€œRepublicans in Collier County have become numb to Oakesā€™ hyperboles…his actions have some serious consequences.ā€ (Alfie called the video nonsense.)

Alfie hired buses for 100 Trumpers to go to the capital on January 6, while he took his private plane. He told me that he went to support the president, not overthrow the government. While he admitted to being ā€œall overā€ Capitol Hill, he denied breaching barriers, entering the building, or doing anything illegal. He flew home the same night.

Recently, Alfie has shifted focus to his regionā€™s school boards, railing against mask mandates and perceived liberal curricula. At a June 2021 Collier County school board meeting, Alfieā€™s denouncement of critical race theory became so unruly he was escorted out. ā€œ[C]orrupt teachers unionsā€ are another target, he wrote on Facebook that August. ā€œWe need to take them down by force!!…all enemies foreign and domestic !!!ā€ (He later told me that he meant confronting unions through legal means.)

Alfieā€™s fervor can distract from the serious business interests he has in the outcome of local midterm elections. At Patriot Fest, he began soliciting CAN PAC contributions from Seed to Table customers and endorsed a slate of candidates. New allies on school boards in Lee and Collier counties, and especially on the Collier County Board of Commissioners, could create a looser regulatory environment for Alfieā€™s businesses. (Alfie claims his only goal is to elect candidates who ā€œuphold the Constitution.ā€)

After his quick rise to local power broker, Alfie may have his eyes on statewide office; he recently floated the idea of running for state commissioner of agriculture and consumer services. But for now, he told me heā€™s after something more ephemeralā€”to make the county ā€œlook like a town in America in the 1950s, when there were American values and respect for both sides.ā€

Considering that Alfie was born in 1968, this is a hazy vision, one spun by Trump and pursued by diehard followers, of conformity and uniformity, of a greatness that predates historic advances in racial equality, womenā€™s rights, ballot access, diversity, or dissent. But Alfie and those like him will be campaigning hard at school boards and county commissions, going, as Bannon said, ā€œvillage by village,ā€ imposing their version of paradise and reshaping government to their benefit. As Alfie told the crowd at Patriot Fest, ā€œThis midterm 2022 election is the most crucial election of our lifetime. Donā€™t kid yourself!…This is a dire time. Weā€™re not going to get another chance.ā€

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We canā€™t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who wonā€™t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its futureā€”you.

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Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

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