Mask-burning COVID-19 activist enters Fort Lauderdale Mayor’s race

He made headlines during the pandemic for railing against COVID-19 lockdowns by leading protests, burning masks and suing Broward County.

Now he wants to take over City Hall by replacing one of the elected officials he regularly criticizes.

Chris Nelson, a DJ, activist and conservative writer who has dedicated much of his online activity to promoting Gov. Ron DeSantis and his policies, has filed paperwork to run for Fort Lauderdale Mayor.

He’s now one of six people in the contest, which also includes incumbent Mayor Dean Trantalis and perennial candidate Jim Lewis, both Democratic lawyers.

“This will be a fun journey,” Nelson said in a six-minute video posted to X on Wednesday morning announcing his candidacy and explaining why he’s running.

The self-shot video features Nelson walking around Riverwalk Park, a public waterfront space in Downtown Fort Lauderdale, where parts of a crane and construction material crashed onto a bridge in early April, killing one person and leaving three injured.

That accident, he said, inspired one reason he’s running: to counteract what he considers to be overdevelopment in the city.

“I know development is good, but the current Mayor and the current Commission, except for a couple of good ones on there, (put) a rubber stamp on everything developers want,” he said.

“They (should) get some pushback, because honestly, Mayor Dean is making it a little too easy on these guys. … The Commission and the Mayor need to act as a check, (not) a rubber stamp to them.”

The second reason he’s running, Nelson continued, is to rid the Riverwalk and downtown of homeless people, first by telling them they need to leave and, if they refuse or return, arresting them.

“We need to preserve (and) save Fort Lauderdale, (and) if I’m elected Mayor, the first thing I’m going to do is (tell Fort Lauderdale Police) Chief (William) Schultz … ‘Do whatever you’ve got to do to get the drunks and the vagrants off of Riverwalk, Las Olas and these areas.’”

Nelson noted a new law DeSantis signed in March that would bolster that effort. The measure, which goes into effect Oct. 1, effectively bans local governments from allowing public camping without explicit permission and requires cities and counties to relocate unhoused people to designated areas elsewhere.

Nelson also mentioned historic flooding that hit the city in April 2023, causing more than $1 billion in damage. He called the deluge and the damage it caused both “inexcusable” and largely preventable.

“There were problems with that drainage system,” he said. “I talked to the people down there. I talked to the people in Edgewood. They told me exactly what happened, and I don’t think we’re in a position where that wouldn’t happen again.”

Nelson gained notability during the anti-lockdown movement in 2020, when his ReOpen South Florida group organized marches and mask-burning protests against local emergency orders meant to stem the spread of COVID-19.

Unlike some who denied the existence of COVID-19, Nelson’s message was that it was “time to get on with our lives.” At the time, more than 9,300 Floridians were listed as having died from the virus, and vaccines were not yet available.

That year, Broward police took Nelson into custody for protesting the restrictions in the County Hall lobby and refusing to leave. He also sued the county over an executive order enforcing mask-wearing in apartment buildings and led a flash mob inside a Target while blasting Twisted Sister’s “We’re Not Gonna Take it.” A video of the protest went viral and prompted a response from the band’s frontman, Dee Snyder, who called them “selfish (expletives)” using his song “for their moronic cause.”

Nelson married a woman who joined him and others in the superstore antic about a year and a half later. Laura Loomer, a White nationalist and anti-Muslim activist whom Marjorie Taylor Greene was reported as describing to Donald Trump’s election team as a “documented liar,” was a wedding guest.

He was married at least once before, according to an X account called Miami Against Fascism that exposes what it considers far-right actors like the Proud Boys, with whose now-imprisoned leader Nelson rubbed elbows.

Among the things the account shared about Nelson: a protective order his ex-wife filled out in July 2019, paperwork on his 2017 arrest for drunkenly trying to fight guests at a bridal party he DJ’d and a plethora of social media posts of varying tastefulness.

Nelson wields sizable social media influence. He has 26,600 followers on X, nearly 3,000 followers on Instagram, close to 1,300 YouTube followers and 360 followers on Rumble, a conservative alternative to YouTube on which he’s posted interviews with GOP operative Roger Stone and renowned gay rights activist Bob Kunst.

In recent posts and media appearances, he’s advocated for voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. rather than Trump, whom he described in a March appearance on MeidasTouch as a “grifting prodigy.”

“He has superhuman abilities to pull the blinds over people’s eyes, so if you were taken by him, if you were had by him, don’t feel bad about it. I was. I’m a smart guy. A lot of people were,” he said. “It’s OK to leave MAGA. You’re gonna be OK. It doesn’t make you a traitor to America.”

Trantalis, a lawyer by trade, won a runoff in March 2018 to win a four-year term as Fort Lauderdale Mayor. He is the first openly gay person to hold the city’s top elected office.

The election is on Nov. 5. Candidates for Mayor and the city’s four other Commission seats have from June 10 at noon to June 14 at noon to qualify.