Byron Donalds embraces Donald Trump at a 2019 awards ceremony in South Carolina. It has taken six years for Trump to embrace him back. (Image: Donalds campaign)
Feb. 23, 2025 by David Silverberg
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.) looks like a shoo-in for governor of Florida—and if the election were held tomorrow he likely would be.
The cause of the current excitement is President Donald Trump’s near-full endorsement of Donalds in an X post at 6:12 pm Thursday night, Feb. 20. The only reason it’s not a “complete and total endorsement” is that Donalds has not yet filed to run for the office. As Trump stated in his post, “should he decide to run” then he would have Trump’s “Complete and Total Endorsement.”
And the post ends with: “RUN, BYRON, RUN!”
President Donald Trump’s full X posting endorsing Rep. Byron Donalds.
After Trump’s years of snubs, indifference and neglect, in politics it doesn’t get much better than that.
But in fact the election is a long ways off. As of this writing it is 1 year, 8 months and 11 days before Election Day, Nov. 3, 2026—or perhaps more importantly, 1 year, 5 months and 26 days before the primary election on August 18, which will likely decide the contest.
A lot can happen.
An endorsement this early brings with it a great many advantages—and downsides.
So where does Donalds really stand in any quest for the governor’s seat in Tallahassee?
(Editor’s note: On Jan. 7, The Paradise Progressive reached out to Rep. Byron Donalds through his office with a request for an in-person interview. No response has been received to date.)
The race
Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) is term-limited and must step down at the end of his current term.
While he was raised from a congressman struggling to win a Republican primary by a Trump endorsement in 2017, he then had the temerity to run for president despite the wishes of the disgraced, twice-impeached Trump in 2023.
Although Trump destroyed DeSantis’ candidacy with name-calling and insults, he has never forgiven this act of disloyalty and heresy, despite gestures of reconciliation—or in DeSantis’ case, complete and total submission.
In 2023 Donalds had to pick between DeSantis and Trump, with both of whom he had been close. In April of that year he chose to turn his back on DeSantis and endorsed Trump for president, one of the first Florida Republicans to do so. Donalds maintained ties with the former president even during his darkest days of disgrace after the January 6th insurrection (which Donalds condemned at the time, calling the rioters “lawless vigilantes,” “a bunch of lunatics,” “an unruly mob,” who were guilty of “thuggery” in “a warped display of so-called patriotism”). For several years running, Donalds welcomed Trump to annual Christmastime fundraising visits in Naples—whose exact locations were kept secret.
Rep. Byron Donalds’ full statement in the immediate wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection and Capitol attack. (Emphasis and highlights by the author.)
When Trump ran again Donalds jumped right in. For the past two years of his term in Congress Donalds has been a faithful spear carrier for Trump in the legion of Make America Great Again (MAGA) cultists.
He actively campaigned for Trump, worked the media to regurgitate the full litany of Trump delusions, and was slavishly praiseful of the master. For a time he thought a vice presidential nod might be his but neither that nor an administration appointment came to pass when Trump won the election.
But immediately after the election Donalds evinced an interest in the governorship. In January of this year he hired the polling and political consulting firm Fabrizio, Lee & Associates, based in Arlington, Va. Tony Fabrizio, head of the firm, did polling for Trump’s 2016 campaign and for his MAGA Inc., super political action committee.
His next move was to release a poll that showed him vastly ahead of any other potential gubernatorial contender. On Jan. 29, the Fort Myers polling firm Victory Insights released a poll that showed Donalds polling well ahead of other Republicans in a potential primary race. Donalds came in at 31 percent approval versus Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez at 4 percent, Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson at 3 percent, and Miami Mayor Francis Suarez at 1 percent. Donalds similarly led the field against potential candidates in an April 2024 poll by the same firm when pitted against Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-1-Fla.), Rep. Michael Waltz (R-6-Fla.), Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis and Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson. (Waltz has since been named National Security Advisor.)
These polls could be dismissed as campaign tactics to scare potential rivals out of the race, given that they were not conducted by a disinterested party like a non-partisan pollster or an academic institution. Further, among hundreds of other pollsters, Victory Insights has been rated 209th by ABC/538.com, which gave it a one-star rating overall, a score of 1 for bias (negative numbers are better) and a low .7 score for transparency, the amount of information it discloses about its polls.
Also, these polls left out other potential rivals, most notably Casey DeSantis, Florida’s first lady who is also rumored to be considering a run.
Whether or not Donalds’ polls showed the true state of play or not, they certainly served the purpose of impressing Trump, who first referenced the Jan. 29 poll in a Feb. 17 Truth Social posting highlighted by Donalds.
The Feb. 20 Trump near-endorsement has led to a wave of publicity and media coverage virtually presuming that Donalds is already elected governor.
But that is hardly the case.
The advantages
There’s no doubt the Trump endorsement carries great weight in Florida, which Trump carried by 56 percent in the 2024 election.
It has undoubtedly already scared off many potential rivals. Those who might think of running will certainly reconsider.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of the Trump endorsement is its potential to open the spigots of cash that will be necessary.
That cash will be important. With numerous fragmented media markets, Florida is an expensive place to run a statewide campaign.
All indications are that Donalds is not widely known in the state outside of his Southwest Florida district, nor does he have a large or devoted following. A statewide campaign will have to introduce him to the majority of Florida Republicans and then all other voters and that will take a lot of money.
However, Florida elections can be bought, as evidenced by Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), another personally unpopular politician who has run very expensive campaigns that he won on very thin margins.
In his congressional campaigns Donalds was dependent on corporate and ideological political action committees (PACs), which heavily funded his races in exchange for a variety of ideological and political pledges. The Trump endorsement raises the prospect that Elon Musk, the shadow president, Trump backer and richest man in the world, will intervene on Donalds’ behalf. If so, Donalds wouldn’t have to rely on numerous PACs but would be completely beholden to Musk alone.
A Donalds victory would play to Trump’s advantage in that he would be getting a completely subservient governor of ostentatious loyalty in his home state.
Also, if Donalds wins, Trump’s record as a kingmaker remains intact. As his endorsement elevated DeSantis in 2017, he would show that he could do it again and that he completely dominates Florida.
All voters regardless of party should take comfort in one aspect of the endorsement: it indicates that Trump expects there to be a competitive 2026 election, as scheduled. In the radical regime Trump has established, that is not to be taken for granted.
The disadvantages
Being the front runner makes Donalds the biggest target in the field. Being the front runner two years out from the election means there will be a lot of time for rivals and opponents to marshal their resources to hit that target.
That means two years of opposition research into all of Donalds’ personal failings, failures and faults—and Donalds’ life and his family will be subject to a scrutiny and exposure he has never experienced as a state legislator or congressional candidate.
When he was 19 years old, Donalds was arrested for drug possession with intent to sell and was let off easy. He has never hidden it and acknowledged it in his very first run for Congress. There was also a bribery allegation when he was a student, for which he gave various explanations and which was expunged from his record.
Last July, The Florida Trident, an independent investigative news site, featured an article based on an interview with Donalds’ first wife, Bisa Hall (Trident Exclusive: Trump VP hopeful Byron Donalds’ ex-wife shares her story, says what he’s doing is “super-dangerous”).
It was detailed, extensive and revealing. Hall was alarmed by Donalds’ relationship with Trump.
“I have big reactions to that man, I don’t think he’s a good human,” Hall said of Trump. “It’s not even political; I just think he’s a bad person.”
She continued: “To see [Trump and Donalds] in collusion together, it was like, ‘If [Donalds] were a good human, would this very bad person be pushing him as a poster child?’” she asked rhetorically. “They’re both very opportunistic. You trot him out there and it makes some people feel better about Trump. I think what he’s doing is super dangerous and I think morally he and I have no crossover at all.”
Hall is African-American. She and Donalds met while they were students at Florida A&M University. They married in 1999 when her scholarship ran out and she needed a claim to Florida residency to maintain her in-state tuition.
After their marriage Donalds attended Florida State University where, despite his marriage, he started dating a white, wealthy student named Erika Lees from a politically conservative family (and to whom he didn’t reveal he was married, according to Hall). When he got Lees pregnant in 2003, he asked Hall for an expedited divorce—and also asked her to cover the divorce costs. He promised to pay her back, which he had not done as of last July, Hall stated.
Donalds married Erika on March 15, 2003. They had their first child five months and six days later.
“I don’t find him considerate, I don’t find him genuine,” Hall said of Donalds. “In all these years since, you’ve changed the nature of your character? No.”
At one time these kinds of allegations and this kind of behavior would have disqualified a candidate for elected office at any level. However, in an era when a convicted felon, sexual assaulter, mob inciter, contract welcher and even arguably a murderer (Iranian General Qassem Soleimani) can be elected president, Donalds’ misdeeds and misbehavior are unlikely to count as disqualifiers with the Florida public.
There is also Donalds’ congressional record, which is hardly distinguished, featuring just one signed piece of legislation enacted into law during his first four years in office.
Nor does he have any relevant management experience that would even remotely qualify him for an executive job like the governorship.
And then there is the one big and unavoidable factor Donalds has tried to overcome, ignore or get the public to overlook in his public career—when it suited his interests. When it served his interests he took a different tack.
The race card
If elected, Donalds would be Florida’s first African-American governor. Race will play an inescapable role in the campaign.
From the very beginning, Donalds has used his race to build his brand—in contrast to most black politicians and activists who have sought to further civil rights and end racial discrimination.
“Today, I’m everything the fake news media tells you doesn’t exist,” he said in a 2020 campaign ad. “A strong, Trump-supporting, gun-owning, liberty-loving, pro-life, politically incorrect Black man.”
After working as a financial advisor in the private sector, Donalds began his political career in 2010, running as a Tea Party candidate opposed to the nation’s first African-American president, Barack Obama.
Donalds said he was inspired to get into politics by the 2008 financial collapse, which occurred on the watch of Republican President George W. Bush. Nonetheless, Donalds leaped into the Tea Party movement.
Byron Donalds in 2010, speaking at a Tea Party rally.(Image: YouTube/Byron Donalds)
His 2012 congressional campaign bid failed but he was elected to the Florida legislature in 2016, representing the 80th House District, which covered largely rural eastern Collier County and the mostly Hispanic, migrant farming town of Immokalee. Donalds won the Republican primary with 64 percent of the vote and was unopposed in the general election.
In 2016 he was all in on the campaign for Donald Trump.
In 2020, upon the retirement of Rep. Francis Rooney from the 19th Congressional District, Donalds barely edged out a nine-candidate Republican field to win the primary and then the general election against Democrat Cindy Banyai.
Throughout this career, Donalds advanced and defended a movement that was largely seen by critics as white-supremacy oriented and often racist, especially in Florida, which had a history of deep segregation and racial violence.
Donalds even saw a silver lining in the segregationist Jim Crow era when he said last June at a Trump campaign event for black conservatives that “during Jim Crow the black family was together. During Jim Crow more black people were not just conservative—black people were always conservative minded—more black people voted conservatively. And then, HEW [Health, Education and Welfare], Lyndon Johnson, and then you go down that road and we are where we are.”
His consistent defense of the MAGA movement and promotion of Trump brought the scorn of his black colleagues in Congress.
“[For what it’s worth, Byron Donalds] is not a historic candidate for Speaker,” tweeted Rep. Cori Bush (D-1-Mo.) in January 2023 after Donalds made an unsuccessful bid for Speaker of the House. “He is a prop. Despite being Black, he supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy. His name being in the mix is not progress—it’s pathetic.”
His entire time in Congress, Donalds was snubbed by the Congressional Black Caucus, which has not added him to its ranks to this day.
As recently as Jan. 22, Donalds was defending Trump’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in an interview with Chris Cuomo on the cable network News Nation.
“Look, I think at the end of the day everybody wants to be sure that people that are getting jobs are qualified to do them,” Donalds told Cuomo. “That is most important but you can’t put diversity for diversity’s sake ahead of qualifications.”
(Perhaps it is unkind to point this out but Donalds himself lacks executive and managerial experience and qualifications for a governorship, which is an executive, managerial job.)
Rep. Byron Donalds is interviewed by Chris Cuomo on Jan. 22. (Image: News Nation)
Ironically, if he runs for governor, the attacks on Donalds for his uncritical Trumpism and opposition to inclusion are likely to be loudest outside Florida, coming from national black politicians and civil rights activists.
Within the state, the Trump endorsement may move Florida’s MAGA faithful in Donalds’ direction and dampen any racist white supremacist objections to him. Given the state’s current political makeup, Donalds only has to win the Republican primary in August to be elected. The Trump endorsement will likely go a long way toward achieving that goal.
Nationally, Trump is no doubt hoping the endorsement will deflect longstanding charges of racism against him, especially given his wholescale attacks on DEI in the federal government and in society generally.
Whether a “prop” or shield for Trump, the role of “politically incorrect Black man” is one that Donalds is clearly only too happy to play. Whether it gets him into the governor’s mansion will be determined when the votes are counted.
The danger of disruption
Another danger of declaring a candidacy two years out is that major disruptions can intervene and nowhere is this truer than in Florida, where hurricanes and other disasters play outsized political roles.
There is nothing that tests a chief executive like a natural disaster—and while the public may not remember a good response, it never forgets a bad one. Rick Scott, for all his other failings, performed fairly well as governor in the face of Hurricane Irma in 2017. So did DeSantis in the face of hurricanes Ian, Idalia, Debby, Helene and Milton.
Donalds has never been tested in an executive role in the face of a disaster.
This is particularly ironic in that his coastal district on the Gulf of Mexico is very vulnerable to extreme weather events and suffered extreme devastation from Hurricane Ian in 2022.
Donalds’ responses to disasters has always been tepid, tardy and tentative. He has walked the ruined landscape for photo opportunities with other Florida politicians once the storm was over and joined his Florida colleagues sending letters to federal agencies calling for relief. However, he has never been aggressive in seeking aid or intervening on his constituents’ behalf. Nor has he advanced legislation to provide relief and protection from his district’s other environmental threat, harmful algal blooms.
Two hurricane seasons loom in the time until the election and if Donalds is a gubernatorial aspirant his reactions will be in the spotlight, even if he doesn’t have the executive authority to command the response. What is more, Florida will be dealing with a purged and weakened Federal Emergency Management Agency and a federal government whose budget-cutting will severely undermine the kind of relief and support it can provide, whether that means boots on the ground or dollars in the bank.
On top of that, DeSantis will still be in the governor’s seat and his wife may be running to succeed him. There is a real possibility that DeSantis will blame Donalds rather than Trump or Elon Musk for any shortcomings in emergency responses and any lack of federal resources and personnel available to aid afflicted areas—and Florida’s Republican voters will believe him.
Hurricanes aren’t the only kinds of disaster that could derail a Donalds gubernatorial run in the next two years: the state, along with the rest of the nation could face an economic crash, another epidemic, a drastic drop in the food supply due to livestock or agricultural issues, hyper-inflation, a trade cutoff, Social Security termination, an energy crisis or any other number of calamities, self-inflicted or otherwise. In Washington an enervated and eviscerated federal government may be unable to help.
Trump’s actions and policies are increasing the likelihood of all those dangers. As the face of Trumpism in Florida, Donalds may get much of the blame, no matter how much he and Trump try to deflect or distract the public.
The forgotten district
Lost amidst all this is the district that Donalds was elected to represent in Congress, Florida’s 19th.
Donalds has never shown a great deal of interest in the district; he’s made clear that it’s only a stepping stone for him to move on to grander things. He wouldn’t even be living in the district if DeSantis hadn’t gerrymandered the congressional map in 2020 to include his home address, which is east of Interstate 75.
If he largely neglected the district in the past, in the next two years Donalds is likely to give it his “complete and total” inattention.
Instead, if he runs he will be fixated on campaigning throughout the state, reaching out to voters from the Panhandle to Key West and relentlessly pursuing the prize. The local problems and needs of Cape Coral, Fort Myers, Fort Myers Beach, Estero, Bonita Springs, Naples and Marco Island will just be an annoyance, like sand flies buzzing at the beach.
Analysis: Peaking too early?
Given the range of uncertainties and possible pitfalls, it is entirely possible that the Donalds gubernatorial campaign may have just peaked, two years before it needs to climax.
It’s also worth noting that as of this writing, Donalds has not formally filed his candidacy papers or announced that he is actually running. He has until noon on April 24, 2026 to qualify for the primary.
At the Conservative Political Action Committee meeting in Maryland on Feb. 21, Donalds told attendees to “stay tuned” for his possible candidacy.
Despite his hiring of the Fabrizio firm, there exists the possibility that Donalds might not run or might seek a different office. After all, the Trump endorsement urged him to “RUN, BYRON, RUN”—meaning Donalds was undecided.
But in the MAGAverse a Trump suggestion is tantamount to the master’s command. It’s worth remembering what the son of 2022 Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker told the world in an X posting during that campaign:
“The Truth: Trump called my dad for months DEMANDING that he run. Everyone with a brain begged him: ‘PLEASE DON’T DO THIS. This is too dirty, you have an insane past… PLEASE DON’T DO THIS.’ We got the middle finger. He ran.”
The problem with supporting a dictator is that sometimes the dictator dictates that you do something you don’t want to do and you have no choice but to obey. If there is any reluctance on Donalds’ part—which seems unlikely—Trump has commanded him to run and as a loyal MAGA he must.
The Trump command and endorsement also means that for the next two years Donalds will also have to stay in the good graces of Trump, a notoriously fickle and mercurial master who has invariably turned on the people around him, betraying allies, supporters and sycophants alike.
That’s a tall and perhaps impossible order.
But for the past eight years Donalds has tied his fate and future to this felonious godfather. In 2024 that paid off when Trump won the presidency again. It may pay off in 2026 with the governorship.
Or then again, he may end up at the end of two years like Rudy Giuliani, who also gave his soul to Donald Trump and went from Time’s Man of the Year and “America’s Mayor” to a soulless, impoverished, hair dye-dripping, clownish caricature of himself.
It’s worth contemplating Giuliani’s fate as Trump’s servant. As Florida pundit and Trump opponent Rick Wilson has pointed out: “everything Trump touches dies.”
That truism may now apply to the United States, the state of Florida, and ultimately, depending on his life choices, Byron Donalds himself.
Liberty lives in light
©2025 by David Silverberg
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