From Byron Donalds to Casey DeSantis, Florida’s 2026 Race for Governor Lunges for the Bizarre

By Diane Roberts

The sitting governor is limping around like a disabled waterfowl with a bad beer hangover, inspiring a high level of schadenfreude in the Florida Legislature.

He’s on the way to obsolescence and everyone knows it.

So — even though the next gubernatorial election doesn’t take place until November 2026 — it’s past time to look to the future: Who will rule the citrus-cankered, gun-crazy, storm-battered Sunshine State?




One of the leading candidates is Byron Donalds, a congressman from southwest Florida and an epic Trump rump-kisser.

Donalds calls Trump “Daddy.”

Trump calls Donalds a “TOTAL WINNER” and says he backs the obsequious congressman for governor.

Donalds’ understanding of America’s past is, to put it kindly, bizarre. During a 2024 event to drum up minority support for “Daddy,” he expressed nostalgia for the good old days of Jim Crow.

Back then, he says, “the Black family was together” and Black people voted conservative.

This is, of course, nonsense: Back then, Black people pretty much didn’t vote at all.

If they got past the poll tax and the “literacy tests” required to register (and most didn’t), and tried to cast a ballot, they could be lynched.

Rep. Donalds might want to familiarize himself with the Ocoee Massacre.

In 1920, a farmer named Mose Norman tried to exercise his rights as an American citizen and vote. A white mob rampaged through the town, killing at least 50 people.

Instead of recognizing that the United States still struggles with racism and misogyny, Donalds prefers to indulge in fake history and retrograde gender stereotyping, informing us: “Men have been created by God to be conquerors, to be hunters,” adding, “A Black man in today’s America is looking around and saying, ‘How can I go hunt for my people and hunt for my family?’”

What’s he talking about? Hunting for a good education? A good job? A rabbit?

Paranoia

With Trump’s endorsement, Donalds leads the Republican pack of potential candidates for governor, at least according to one recent poll, which has him at 31% support, followed (distantly) by former Lt. Gov. Jeannette Nuñez, Ag Commissioner Wilton Simpson, and the ethics-challenged mayor of Miami.

But, despite pronouncements that with Trump in the mix the race is a done deal, there are other, er, interesting candidates who cannot be dismissed so easily.




With the chaos President Musk is unleashing on the nation, Trump may not be quite so powerful in a year’s time — especially if he messes with your granny’s Medicare.

Casey DeSantis tops the polls conducted by the University of North Florida and Florida Atlantic University/Mainstreet Survey.

Ron DeSantis insists Florida’s First Lady isn’t running for anything: She’s a wife and mother, a dedicated supporter of America’s cosmetics industry.

He rather formally refers to her as “First Lady,” though “co-governor” might be more accurate.

When the two of them toured areas ravaged by Hurricane Ian in 2022, they dressed exactly alike: jeans, white shirts, Florida Department of Emergency Management vests, white rubber boots.

When it comes to his career, she’s the decider, the strategizer, the enforcer.

Casey is seen as more likeable than Ron but, like him, she’s paranoid.

In 2024, when Ron DeSantis was running for president, she tried to “humanize” him, reminding him to smile and be “likeable.”

Alas, it didn’t work, as evidenced by his dismal showing in the primaries.

Susie Wiles, Florida’s most feared campaign pro, worked for DeSantis until Casey decided she was somehow trading on her association with the governor and ran her off.




Wiles, who makes no secret of her profound dislike of the DeSantii, steered Trump’s campaign and is now White House chief of staff.

Oops.

Less popular than palmetto bugs

But ruthlessness, control freakery, and a streak of authoritarianism a mile wide are hardly disqualifying in Florida.

Ron DeSantis and his equally socially awkward predecessor proved that.

While Byron Donalds and Casey are clearly the frontrunners, there are plenty of other undelicious characters eyeing the Mansion.

Matt Gaetz, for starters — the rich, eminently punchable, Botox boy who has all the charm of a drunken iguana.

That would be the same Matt Gaetz who was forced to withdraw his name from consideration as Trump’s pick to be attorney general, the very Matt Gaetz who, in the words of the congressional investigation into his conduct, has been credibly accused of “prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges, and obstruction of Congress.”

The guy’s been investigated for sex trafficking by the Department of Justice (back when we still had one), paid a 17-year-old to have sex with him, and “entertained” fellow House members with nude photos of women he claimed to have slept with.

He has no ideas, but he’s rich in insults.

He insults Republicans, Democrats, senators, congressmen and -women, reproductive rights supporters, environmentalists, feminists, gay people, and Black people.

As a member of the Florida House, he ridiculed two Black senators, implying they were stupid.

Gaetz may have to overcome a few obstacles. For starters, his statewide approval rating is 18%. He’s less popular than palmetto bugs, blue green algae, and Kanye West.

Still, money works wonders in politics and a Gaetz campaign would have plenty of cash — even if he had to get it from his daddy.

Trumpier than thou

Florida Commissioner of Agriculture Wilton Simpson, another possible candidate, has less name recognition than Matt Gaetz, but then, he hasn’t been credibly accused of statutory rape.

Simpson’s recently distinguished himself by sniping at Ron DeSantis over who’s the Trumpiest on immigration: “I’m not the one who opposed and ran against President Trump.”

Back when Simpson was president of the Senate, DeSantis vetoed a $600 million cancer facility planned for Pasco County (part of Simpson’s district) as well as $300 million for conservation lands.

Out of spite.

Jeannette Nuñez, you say? She’s making bank at her new sinecure: interim president of FIU, so why would she leave?

Plus, her polling is negligible, and she’s dull to boot.

But this is Florida: You never know.

For about five minutes in 2023, Francis Suarez, mayor of Miami, was a candidate for president of the United States. It did not go well.




Lately, he’s been calling a run for governor “interesting.”

What’s also interesting is that he’s been the subject of several state and federal probes (the state ones have now been dismissed by Florida’s joke of an Ethics Commission) involving his lucrative side hustles, including his getting paid $10,000 a month by a developer who was asking the city to grant him a special building permit.

Dare to dream

But why limit ourselves to those so-called credible — if possibly indictable — folks whose allegedly relevant experience or, at least, ability to get in front of TV cameras, makes them fit to run for Florida’s highest office?

Blue Sky thinking, people!

Don Trump Jr.?

He’s young, he’s well-connected, he’s armed, he lives in a $10 million house in Jupiter (the town in Palm Beach County, not the planet) and he has Thoughts About Government.

Like, that J.D. Vance is AWESOME.

Don Jr. gives himself credit for getting our Nazi-curious V.P. his current gig, expending what he described as “10,000 percent” of his political capital on begging his daddy.

He championed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., too.

So, when your kid gets the measles, you know who to thank.

Then there’s Jeff Bezos.

He’s a Floridian! And owns no fewer than three immodest dwellings on Indian Creek Island, one of them 23,000 square feet.

His neighbors include Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, Tom Brady, and rising seas caused by the anthropogenic climate change none of them believe in.

Jeff B would be a great choice: He could just buy the state (except for the parts his fellow billionaires own), and we could all work at Amazon warehouses and branches of Whole Foods.

Economic problems solved.

Out there

And now that he’s out of prison, what about former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio?

Actually, he can’t call himself a “Proud Boy” any more: Earlier this month, a federal judge awarded the violent nationalists’ name and trademarks to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington D.C. — the church Tarrio’s outfit vandalized in 2020.

Or Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, one of Florida’s most impressive intellects.

Luna, author of a proposal to put Trump’s face on Mt. Rushmore, is investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

She’s ordered members of the Warren Commission to appear before her, which, no doubt they’d be delighted to do, except they’re all dead.

Imagine: If APL were governor, she could launch investigations into Mickey’s mousehood — is he an actual rodent or an undocumented Mexican? — as well as demand Miami P.D.’s Sonny Crockett testify under oath on whether Detective Rico Tubbs was a DEI hire.

Seriously, y’all: With this rich cornucopia of political geniuses, how can Florida go wrong?

Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.