Byron Donalds, a congressman backed by Donald Trump, won the Republican nomination for governor on Tuesday in the race to succeed Ron DeSantis.
Donalds, who has represented south-west Florida since ۲۰۲۱, trounced three reasonably prominent Republican rivals, including Jay Collins, DeSantis’s handpicked lieutenant governor.
If he wins the November election, as he is expected to do in the conservative stronghold, Donalds would become the first Black governor in any southern US state.
So confident was Donalds of victory that his television advertisements in the weeks leading to the primary ignored his Republican challengers and focused on former Republican congressman David Jolly, who secured the Democratic party’s nomination on Tuesday.
He continued that message on Tuesday evening. “I am grateful to my family, my team, my volunteers, and every Floridian who powered us to this victory,” he wrote on X. “My Democrat opponent would raise taxes, make life more expensive, and bring the Democrats’ radical left agenda to the Sunshine State – Florida cannot afford Liberal David Jolly. David Jolly has lost before, and he will lose again on November ۳. United, we will win the Governor’s mansion in ۷۷ days and ensure that Florida remains the best state in this great country.”
In his victory speech, Jolly addressed political division and the economy before placing blame on Donalds for the state’s rising costs. “To my Democratic friends, thank you for welcoming me into the party. We have built friendships, we have found common ground,” he said.
He added: “Byron Donalds has sold the governor’s mansion to the highest bidder and the special interests across the state have been happy to play ball.”
DeSantis did not make an endorsement in the race, but Trump did, backing Donalds and his conservative credentials, with support that could prove decisive in Florida, arguably the arguably the heart of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, and home to his Mar-a-Lago Palm Beach estate.
DeSantis was largely considered dead in the water in his own campaign to become governor in ۲۰۱۸, before Trump’s endorsement turned things around.
Republican voters roundly rejected the credentials of Collins, an army special forces veteran who called Donalds a Washington elite; Paul Renner, the former Florida house speaker; and extremist James Fishback.
Instead, they favored Donalds, who at times polled close to ۵۰% and is, according to his campaign website, “committed to implementing President Trump’s agenda to Make America Great Again”.
A vocal Trump ally who was reportedly considered for the ۲۰۲۴ vice-president pick that ultimately went to JD Vance, Donalds made affordability and reducing property taxes and insurance costs a central plank of his campaign, which some have seen as a dig at DeSantis’s obsession with culture war issues during his eight-year tenure.
Jolly, a former Republican congressman and lawyer, became an independent, then switched parties last year.
He ran a much more moderate campaign than the ones that worked well for progressive Democrats in other states’ primaries this summer, although that did not stop Donalds assailing him as “a radical liberal” who he claimed was an advocate for gender-reassignment surgery who supports transgender males in girls’ and women’s sports.
Jolly easily fended off a challenge from five other Democrats, including state representative Dotie Joseph and Dayna Marie Foster, a former high school educator who was endorsed by the Florida Democratic Progressive caucus.
Jolly faces an uphill battle in November, however. No Democrat has won a Florida governor’s election since Lawton Chiles in ۱۹۹۴; and no Democrat has won a statewide election in Florida since Nikki Fried, the current chair of the Florida Democratic party, was elected agriculture commissioner in ۲۰۱۸.
