Screenshots via X/@j_fishback
Audio By Carbonatix
In late January, a Pinterest user named Valeria Quimby posted a vision board featuring a collage of aspirational images: a church wedding, a diamond-studded Rolex, a hot pink Hermès handbag, and a stately building one might say resembles a governor’s mansion. By April, the account was posting delicate lace and silk wedding gowns. In mid-May, it shifted to colorful floral bouquets.
Just weeks later, Quimby appeared to manifest at least part of that vision.
On May 23, far-right Florida gubernatorial candidate James Fishback announced on social media that he’d married a woman now named Valeria Fishback (New Times identified her maiden name as Valeria Quimby-Moro). He shared a video on Instagram of the couple walking down the aisle inside a small, white clapboard church in North Florida, set to Olivia Rodrigo’s new hit track “Drop Dead.”
“I always had a vision of us standing like this,” Fishback captioned the post, referencing lyrics from the song.
But online observers quickly noticed something strange: the bride in Fishback’s wedding video was not the same woman he had publicly presented as his girlfriend — and Florida’s potential future first lady — just months earlier.
In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Fishback said that he met his wife “last week, got engaged on Wednesday, completed all of Catholic marriage prep on Thursday, found a venue Friday, and got married yesterday” — before clarifying that this was “obviously sarcasm.”
“It’s a tragic sign of the times that some are mad that I didn’t mindlessly date my wife for 5 years before getting married,” he wrote. “We grew not too far from each other. We dated for several months, got engaged, and then married at my Catholic Church.”
It was the latest strange turn in a campaign full of them.
The long-shot candidate — who as of December raised just $22,000 in campaign funds, a stark contrast to his opponent, Byron Donalds, who has raked in tens of millions — has earned the nickname “Groyper candidate” while courting Gen-Z men and aligning himself with the likes of white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes. He’s faced regular criticism for his racist remarks about Donalds, whom he has called a “slave to donors” and a “token Black” in Congress who wants to turn Florida into a “Section 8 ghetto.”
Just months ago, Fishback appeared to have been dating a woman named Francesca Raine (AKA Franki Raine), a model and former singer who reportedly once went by the name “Crypto Barbie.” In a recent post on X, an account that appears to belong to Raine accused Fishback of breaking up with her to marry a “random girl after political pressure.” Critics like Laura Loomer, a far-right, anti-immigrant conspiracy theorist and Trump whisperer, previously attacked Raine as unfit to be first lady, saying she didn’t seem conservative or “trad.”
So who is Fishback’s mystery new woman? And what exactly is going on here?
In a phone interview with New Times on Wednesday, four days after the wedding, Fishback said he met Valeria (whom he described as being in her “mid-twenties”) at a Miami bookstore (he declined to say which) in early March. He said she recognized him from his gubernatorial campaign and introduced herself.
They quickly hit it off and had their first date about a week later at a steakhouse in Sebring, Florida, Fishback says.
“I think that certainly we met just randomly, but I think at our first date we both had a conversation just generally about why what each of us are looking for, and both of us unequivocally said that we’re dating to marry, and a lot of young people are not,” Fishback says.
Fishback said the two bonded over their shared Catholic faith, politics, and mutual frustration with what he described as modern “hookup culture.”
“Valeria and I, both as Christians, we reject this hookup culture, this mindless dating culture, the ghosting culture, the Tinder online dating culture,” Fishback says, although earlier in the campaign announced he had joined Tinder to meet young female voters. “It’s really about meeting people authentically, sharing something that you’re passionate about. And we were grateful to find each other and are now husband and wife.”
Fishback says that the two grew up not too far from each other: Valeria in Miami and him in Broward. Their wedding appears to have taken place at Saint Vincent de Paul Catholic Church, a small chapel in Madison, the northern Florida city where Fishback resides. (Reached by phone, a receptionist at the church told New Times that Father Dominic Toan Tran, who appears to have officiated the ceremony, was “not interested” in speaking about the wedding and would not be available for comment.)
For those questioning whether the wedding was real: A spokesperson for the Madison County Clerk of Court confirmed to New Times that Fishback applied for a marriage license but has not yet returned it. Under Florida law, an officiant who performs a marriage ceremony must return the license to the issuing county clerk’s office within 10 days of the marriage.
Fishback says his relationship with Raine ended sometime between late January and early February. While the X account that appears to belong to Raine recently shared photos of the young, blonde woman trying on a wedding gown and a veil, Fishback says he’s “not sure why she would be trying on a wedding dress.”
“We were never engaged, we never talked about marriage or anything like that. Our relationship lasted, honestly, about a month,” he says. “She’s a nice girl, but we were not the right fit for each other, and that’s that.”
New Times was unable to reach Raine for comment, despite attempts by phone.
Jessica Bowlby contributed to this report.
