Either governor will almost certainly work with a Republican-controlled legislature
On Tuesday, Florida voters will choose between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly in a governor’s race testing the endurance of the state’s conservative shift in recent years.
A Democrat has not won Florida’s governor’s race since Lawton Chiles in 1994. David Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Tampa, switched parties and campaigned as a centrist ready to move the state beyond years of disputes over culture and gender during outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis’s tenure. His campaign is part of the Democratic Party’s effort to rebound in Florida.
Byron Donalds, a congressman from southwest Florida, won the Republican nomination with President Donald Trump’s backing. He sought to define Jolly as an out-of-touch liberal and would be Florida’s first Black governor if elected. Throughout the campaign, Donalds reached out to Black voters, who have overwhelmingly backed Democrats.
The results will signal whether Trump’s unpopularity, which has weighed down Republicans across the U.S., will extend into his adopted home state. Democrats head into the election heartened by a string of special-election wins over the past year, from Miami to Trump’s backyard in Palm Beach.
Jolly faces steep hurdles in his effort to lead the party’s rebound. Republicans have a roughly 1.5 million voter-registration advantage, and Donalds has dominated Jolly in fundraising. Seeking to overcome those challenges, Jolly has campaigned in Florida’s Democratic strongholds, such as Broward County, along with traditionally Republican parts of central Florida and the Panhandle.
Regardless of who wins the governor’s race, the winner will almost certainly have to work with a legislature where Republicans will hold majorities. If Jolly proves competitive, Democrats have hoped they could at least break the GOP’s supermajority in the legislature, giving them greater leverage in the crafting of bills.
Beyond the national political environment, the race has centered on issues including high prices and the cost of homeowners insurance, a particularly salient issue in a state with a history of being ravaged by hurricanes.
Florida spent a generation as America’s prized political battleground, where the interests of big cities, agricultural towns, newly arrived retirees and diverse Latino communities collided in elections often decided by fractions of a percentage point. That reputation began to fade under DeSantis, who won his first race in 2018 by less than half a percentage point.
Once in office, DeSantis leaned into debates over race and gender, including signing legislation often labeled by critics as “Don’t Say Gay” that bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade. By the time he ran for reelection in 2022, DeSantis won a nearly 20-percentage-point landslide that the Associated Press described as leaving the state’s Democrats in “shambles.”
Donalds has maintained steady confidence throughout the campaign. He has balanced his support for Trump, including appearing with the president at a recent rally, with efforts to create some distance, such as minimizing references to the president on his campaign website.