3 things to know about Byron Donalds, Trump’s top pick to be Florida’s next governor
In 2020, then-state Rep. Byron Donalds won a nine-way Republican congressional primary by about 800 votes.
Less than five years later, Donalds, a third-term U.S. representative from the Naples area, has won one of the most coveted prizes in Republican politics: a gubernatorial endorsement from President Donald Trump. (Gov. Ron DeSantis is term-limited and can’t run again in 2026.) Expect an announcement about Donalds’ run for the post in the coming days.
By any definition, Donalds has seen a dizzying rise in the last half-decade. Here are three things to know about the man who might lead our state come 2027.
1. A fighter for school choice
Donalds, the child of a single mother in Brooklyn, says he comes from a rough neighborhood.
He secured admission to the historically Black Florida A&M, but ran into legal trouble as a young man. In 1997, he was arrested for misdemeanor marijuana possession. In 2000, he was charged with what some news reports say was bribery and others say was depositing a bad check. The record for that offense has since been expunged. The marijuana charge was dropped after Donalds entered a pretrial diversion program.
Donalds found more secure footing after transferring to Florida State University to finish his degree in finance and marketing, graduating in 2002, according to his congressional biography.
Donalds got caught up in the conservative Tea Party revolution of 2010, running unsuccessfully for Congress for the first time two years later.
He and his wife, Erika, found their signature issue a few years later in charter schools. As they struggled to find satisfactory schools for their three young boys, they looked for more conservative-friendly options. They helped start and run the Mason Classical Academy, a charter school in Collier County. (They are no longer involved with the school.)
In 2014, Erika Donalds won a local school board seat. Two years later, Byron Donalds was elected to the state House. There, he championed conservative causes like school choice. He also supported criminal justice reform.
Erika Donalds later founded the Optima Foundation, which aimed to support charter schools with curriculum crafted by the conservative Hillsdale College. She has also scored a number of prominent political appointments, including being tapped by DeSantis in 2022 to serve on the Florida Gulf Coast University board of trustees.
2. MAGA from early on
Byron Donalds was an early supporter of the president, speaking at a Trump rally in September 2016. When he ran for Congress, he touted his Trump bona fides.
“The fake news media doesn’t want to cover black men who are strong supporters of @RealDonaldTrump. So help me spread this message: I’m a Trump supporting, liberty loving, proven Conservative running for Congress,” he posted to X in 2020.
After the 2020 election, Donalds voted to object to the certification of the electoral college in key swing states — effectively voting to overturn the election. He told Vanity Fair in 2023 that he did not consider Joe Biden to be a “legitimate” president. (No evidence of widespread fraud in that presidential election, which Trump lost, has been discovered.)
In Congress, he’s been part of the ultraconservative Tea Party caucus. Highly thought of by Republican colleagues, he won a few votes in early 2023 to become speaker of the Florida House. Following Trump’s lead, Donalds in January introduced a bill to end taxes on tips.
Donalds grew close to DeSantis at one point, introducing the governor the night of DeSantis’ gubernatorial reelection. But the two have drifted apart since, with Donalds endorsing Trump over DeSantis during the 2024 Republican primary. The two also got into a brief spat in 2023 over statewide education standards that taught middle schoolers that 19th-century American slaves learned useful skills. Donalds objected to the standards; DeSantis’ army of online surrogates tore into him.
Throughout the 2024 campaign, in which Trump looked to cut into Democrats’ margins with Black men, Donalds was among Trump’s most vocal messengers.
“Byron is a superstar,” said state Sen. Joe Gruters, a former Republican Party of Florida chairperson. “The guy was everywhere during the campaign to help make sure the president is successful.”
3. Most Floridians haven’t heard of Donalds
A survey released earlier this week by the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Lab found that two in three active registered Florida voters hadn’t heard of Donalds.
That stands in contrast to others rumored to be eying a run for governor, including former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz and first lady Casey DeSantis. Just one in three Floridians said they hadn’t heard of Gaetz and DeSantis, respectively.
This story was originally published February 21, 2025 at 3:23 PM with the headline "3 things to know about Byron Donalds, Trump’s top pick to be Florida’s next governor."