Rep. Byron Donalds cruised to victory Tuesday night over 10 other opponents in the Florida Republican gubernatorial primary.
Donalds, boosted by President Trump, recorded 49% of the vote, nearly doubling up Sunshine State Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (24.7%), while and far-right former investor James Fishback (10.1%) and former state House Speaker Paul Renner (8.2%) battled to finish a distant third.
Donalds, 47, was always the big favorite to win the Republican nomination, running more than 30 percentage points ahead of his challengers in the polls since October, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
Term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis notably did not endorse any of the candidates in the race to replace him — not even his lieutenant governor.
Fishback stole most of the campaign headlines with highly inflammatory comments, including accusing Donalds of wanting to turn Florida into a “Section 8 ghetto” and threatening to send civilians armed with AR-15s to quell teen violence in the state.
Fishback, 31, also attacked Donalds for his pro-Israel views and acceptance of donations from pro-Israel political action committees — dubbing him “AIPAC Shakur” in a reference to the rapper Tupac Shakur and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee — as well as a “token black” and a “slave to his donors.”
The extreme candidate also joined Tinder, ostensibly to meet young female voters, even after a Florida school district cut ties with him in 2022 over an alleged inappropriate relationship with a minor student, NBC News reported.
Donalds ignored virtually all of his younger opponent’s offensive remarks, offering by way of response: “If you want to be ignorant, you’re allowed to be.”
Donalds raised more than $100 million for his campaign as well as committees backing his bid, a windfall that will now be put to use against Democratic nominee David Jolly, who served in the US House as a Republican from 2014 to 2017.
If elected in November, Donalds will become Florida’s first black governor and its fifth consecutive Republican chief executive.
The last Democrat elected governor of Florida was Buddy MacKay, who exited office in January 1999.
Jolly left the Republican Party in 2018 and registered as an independent. In 2022, the ex-House rep joined Andrew Yang’s Forward Party.
By 2025, Jolly, then a regular pundit on the left-leaning MS NOW, had registered as a Democrat to make his run for governor in Florida.
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