February 26, 2025
Byron Donalds To Run For Florida Governor; Ron DeSantis Is Salty
Trump pushed for Donalds to run for the seat.
After months of speculation, Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fl.) went on Fox News with Sean Hannity to announce his next political move — running for governor of Florida, Politico reports.
With President Donald Trump’s endorsement, Donalds made it official after “a lot of prayer.” “After a lot of prayer, a lot of thoughts with my family and my friends, I’m here to announce my candidacy to be the next governor of the great state of Florida,” Donalds said to the conservative talk show host.
Trump has been pushing for his ally to run for the seat since May 2024 and continued to uplift the GOP congressman in a Truth Social post on Feb. 20, calling Donalds a “highly respected congressman” and a “TOTAL WINNER.” Rumors heightened around his political plans after he began rallying top donors, even hosting a hospitality suite to let supporters know he would be running during a state Republican Party meeting in Orlando in January 2025.
Representing the congressional district that includes areas such as Naples and Fort Myers, Donalds spoke about his humble beginnings in the Sunshine State with Hannity, stating that he thinks it’s time for Florida to be led into the future. “Sean, we have a wonderful state. I got to Florida when I was 17 years old, off of a Greyhound bus with just a trunk full of clothes,” he said, according to Fox News.
“And over the rest of my time in Florida, I built a family, I built a career. … I was able to serve four years in a state legislature, four years in Congress. And I think now is the time to now take the mantle and lead our state into the future.”
The three-term House member has been the only person to announce their candidacy for the governor seat, with elections taking place in 2026, hoping to take over for Gov. Ron DeSantis. While the two seemingly worked well together, Donalds fell out with the governor in 2023 after pushing for African American history standards for middle school education to be “adjusted” following DeSantis’s controversial anti-woke agenda.
On the other hand, DeSantis is pushing for his wife, Casey, to join state leadership as his successor after claiming that he doesn’t feel Donalds has done much in Washington.
“They haven’t done very much yet,” DeSantis said. “They’re not putting his executive orders into place. We’ll see what they do on the spending, but we have such a narrow majority that to be trying to campaign in other places and missing these votes, I think, is not something that’s advisable at all,” he said.
”You got a guy like Byron, he just hasn’t been part of the victories we’ve had in FL. He’s been in other states campaigning.”
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried condemned Donalds’ new endeavors shortly after the announcement, calling him a “dangerous political opportunist who should be nowhere near the governor’s mansion.” She also criticized him for “defending insurrectionists” in reference to the Jan. 6. riot at the U.S. Capitol.
However, if Donalds is successful, he will become Florida’s first Black governojoining only three other Black leaders elected in U.S. history.
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