U.S. Representative Randy Fine (R-FL), a cosponsor of a Congressional resolution to ship American arms and aid to genocidal Azerbaijan, is facing mounting national outrage after declaring on video, “We don’t want Armenians to be able to serve in Congress,” according to reports by the Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA).
The Florida Republican’s remark, an open call to bar an entire ethnic community from elected office in the United States, has been condemned as a blatant attack on the rights of Armenian-Americans and a direct affront to the nation’s core democratic values of equality and representation, with critics warning it echoes discriminatory rhetoric that has no place in American political discourse. The ANCA, an influential Armenian-American grassroots advocacy organization, is leading the rebuke.
“Randy Fine’s racist rant targeting Armenians comes as no surprise – after all, he’s backing a bill to arm and abet Azerbaijan, a genocidal dictatorship fresh off its ethnic cleansing of 150,000 Armenian Christians,” said ANCA Executive Director Aram Hamparian. “This hate-filled bigot has no place in Congress.”
Fine’s remark lands at a moment when his own legislative record is already drawing fire from across the Armenian-American community. Per ANCA, the Florida Republican is a cosponsor of Congressional legislation that would direct U.S. weapons and assistance to the Aliyev regime in Baku, the same dictatorship that in September 2023 carried out the forced depopulation of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh), driving more than 100,000 Indigenous Armenian Christians from their ancestral homeland in what human rights organizations have described as one of the largest single acts of ethnic cleansing of the 21st century. Arming that regime, critics say, is the policy expression of the bigotry on display in Fine’s own words.
Calls are growing for Fine to clarify or retract the statement, and for Congressional leadership to address the broader implications of such rhetoric within the halls of government. Observers note that remarks singling out any ethnic or religious group for exclusion from public office raise serious constitutional and civil rights concerns, particularly given the United States’ longstanding commitment to pluralism and equal opportunity, and that Armenian-Americans have long contributed to public service at every level of government.
Armenian-Americans have served the United States in uniform, in the courts, in legislatures, and in Congress itself for well over a century, from the veterans of both World Wars to the governors, mayors, judges, and members of Congress who have represented their communities with distinction. To declare that Armenians should not be permitted to serve in Congress is not merely an insult to a single ethnic group. It is an attempt to write an entire American community out of the American story, and to do so on behalf of the same foreign dictatorship that just ethnically cleansed Artsakh of its Armenian Christian population.
