- December 4, 2025
Congressman Randy Fine discusses civics with a group of home schooled Flagler County students. Photo by Sierra Williams
Congressman Randy Fine discusses civics with a group of home schooled Flagler County students. Photo by Sierra Williams
Congressman Randy Fine with a group of Flagler County homeschool students. Photo by Sierra Williams
After the civic class with the students, Congressman Randy Fine had a roundtable with the children's parents to discuss the government shutdown. Photo by Sierra Williams
Congressman Randy Fine with the mothers of the homeschooled children. From left to right: Summer Dailey, Alexis Moore, Jen Herold, Fine, Tiffany Wiggen and Rose Spelman. Photo by Sierra Williams
After the civic class with the students, Congressman Randy Fine had a roundtable with the children's parents to discuss the government shutdown. Photo by Sierra Williams
Amidst the government shutdown, Congressman Randy Fine made time to meet with a group of homeschooled Flagler County students to give a short civics lesson on Oct. 14.
The 10 students, ranging from the 3rd to 8th graders, are in a co-op group of parents who, once a week, meet at the Shepherd of the Coast Lutheran Church to share class lessons. For a recent history lesson, the children’s mothers planned and took them on a trip to Washington, D.C.
Among their plans, parent Jen Herold said, was a tour of the Capital Building. Unfortunately, that was scheduled the day the government shutdown on Oct. 1. She said after calling and being transferred around, Fine’s communications director arranged to take the kids on a private tour of the Capitol Building, despite the shut down.
Since then, she said, they had kept in touch and the idea of Fine coming to talk to the kids was brought up.
“We are going over history and government right now and with the shutdown,” Herold said, “we thought this would be a very cool opportunity for the kids.”
Fine went over the broad strokes of the federal government and what his job entailed before taking questions from the group: How did you become a congressman? How long have you worked in politics? What qualifications does it take to become a representative? Do you like being in government?
The children also had questions about topics that are in the news and media: kids using social media, Charlie Kirk, and, of course, several questions about the government shutdown.
“I think it's pretty terrible,” Fine said. “Unfortunately, some of the people that I serve with would rather we spend money on people from other countries than keep our government open, and it's a really terrible thing.”
Fine placed the blame squarely on Democrats’ shoulders for refusing to pass a continuing resolution: “The Democrats said, ‘We'll only let you keep the government open for the next seven weeks, if you will promise to give free health care to foreigners who are here illegally for the next 10 years,’” Fine said. “And we said, ‘that’s crazy.’”
This has been the national rhetoric over the government shutdown, which began on Oct. 1. While Republicans have repeatedly said the shutdown is the fault of Democrats wanting undocumented immigrants to have healthcare benefits, while Democrats are demanding extensions to some Affordable Care Act measures while stating those measures are not available to undocumented immigrants.
Fine was last in Flagler County in August where he announced he’d helped get funding earmarked for Flagler County’s beach renourishment released to the county. In an interview with the Observer, Fine said that while the government is shut down, “that’s all stopped.”
“I want to be up there working on those kinds of issues,” Fine said. “But because the Democrats are keeping the government closed, there's no one for us to work with.”
Fine said it was important for him to come meet with the kids and their parents as they were his constituents. Meeting constituents is one of his favorite things about being elected, he said, and it’s important for people to know their elected officials are, after all, just regular people too.
“That's something that I get very frustrated with people on both sides of the aisle about,” he said. “They forget that when you get elected, you just put on the title that you take off when you're done.”
