Rep. Byron Donalds and former Rep. David Jolly could have been colleagues on Capitol Hill.
But come November, they will be rivals striving to become Florida’s next governor.
Donalds, endorsed by President Trump, cruised to victory over 10 other opponents with 47.8% of the vote in Tuesday’s Republican gubernatorial primary, nearly doubling up Sunshine State Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (25.2%), while far-right former investor James Fishback (10.5%) and former state House Speaker Paul Renner (8.5%) battled to finish a distant third.
“The primary is over,” Donalds, 47, told supporters at a Universal Studios resort hotel in Orlando. “Tonight we put aside our differences. Tonight we are one united Republican Party.”
The three-term congressman was always the big favorite to win the GOP nomination, running more than 30 percentage points ahead of his challengers in the polls since October, according to the RealClearPolitics average.
Term-limited Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis notably did not endorse any of the candidates in the GOP race to replace him — not even his lieutenant governor, Collins.
“I congratulate Byron Donalds on his victory,” Collins wrote on X after thanking his campaign staff, “and vow to continue fighting like hell to ensure we remain the free state of Florida in November.”
In his victory speech, Donalds vowed to tackle government spending, vowing to “DOGE all local governments and all state agencies” while promising “there will be no sacred cows.”
“Taxpayers deserve to know their hard-earned dollars are being spent with transparency and hard-earned integrity,” he said, adding that “Liberal David Jolly is the change that Florida cannot afford.”
Here’s the latest coverage on the Aug. 18 midterm primary elections
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 — 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.”
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.”
The Donalds campaign and committees backing his bid combined to raise more than $100 million, a windfall that will now be put to use against Jolly, who served in the US House as a Republican from 2014 to 2017 — losing his bid for a second full congressional term to another Republican-turned-Democrat, Charlie Crist.
Jolly left the Republican Party in 2018 and initially registered as an independent. In 2022, he joined former presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s Forward Party.
By 2025, Jolly, a regular pundit on left-leaning MS NOW, had registered as a Democrat to make his run for governor in the Sunshine State.
“To my Democratic friends, thank you for welcoming me into the party,” Jolly told cheering supporters Tuesday night, promising to run on a platform of limited government that still “needs to do its part to fill the gaps” between rich and poor.
“As an old-school Republican, I talk about ending the culture wars not to celebrate some progressive platform,” he added, “but because I still believe in the old-school Republican, libertarian policy that government should simply stay out of your life.”
If elected in November, Donalds will become Florida’s first black governor and its fifth consecutive Republican chief executive.
The most recent Democrat to hold office as Florida governor was Buddy MacKay, who left Tallahassee in January 1999 after his defeat by Jeb Bush the previous November.
Lawton Chiles became the most recent Democrat to be elected Florida governor when he won a second term in 1994.
