Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) acknowledged that his friendship with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) took a hit after the representative endorsed Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
Donalds, who is considered by many to be a strong contender for Florida’s 2026 gubernatorial election, said in a podcast on Thursday that it was “really cool” to see a poll putting him at the top of potential candidates at 31%. However, he argued he was not ready to say definitively if he would run for governor next year and is currently focused on enacting Trump’s agenda in Congress.
When asked about his relationship with the current governor, the Florida lawmaker replied, “We’ve been better.”
“I think that that relationship got frayed when I backed President Trump in the presidential primaries, and I think from the outside looking in, people remember back in 2022 when the governor was running for reelection, I was at the election night party,” Donalds explained on the PBD Podcast. “I introduced him on stage, and we had that conversation. They asked me to do it, and I said ‘of course I’ll do it, whatever you need,’ because he’s been a great governor.”
While Donalds believed that DeSantis was “America’s governor,” he felt that Trump was ultimately “the right person at the right time.” However, he predicted he and DeSantis would find a way to “figure that out and move forward.”
The lawmaker added that much of DeSantis’s accomplishments were made possible by former Gov. Jeb Bush, which started the process of Florida’s shift away from being “a blue state.” Donalds added that Bush’s focus on education and public safety was followed by Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), another former Florida governor, who focused on “economic issues.”
In terms of what Florida needs to do in the future, a hint at what he would seek to accomplish in a hypothetical role as governor, Donalds said the state needs to become “the financial hub of the world” within 10 years. He cited the number of digital asset communities coming to the state and said that this should be a focus going forward.
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“If I’m governor of this state, and all they say about me is ‘he did a great job, but he wasn’t Ron DeSantis,’ I can live with that,” Donalds said.
Other than Donalds, another possible candidate for Florida’s 2026 gubernatorial election is former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who revealed earlier this month that he is “starting to think” about this possibility and that he has “plenty of time” to come to a decision. Since resigning from Congress, Gaetz has become the host of The Matt Gaetz Show on One America News and has also announced the launch of a new podcast.