Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) isn’t rushing to lift up Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) as Florida’s next governor despite President Donald Trump’s recent preemptive endorsement of the congressman for 2026.
DeSantis expressed doubt that Donalds should be looking at the gubernatorial race and encouraged him to focus on achieving legislative accomplishments with a slim Republican majority.
“I want these congressmen focused on enacting his agenda. They haven’t done very much yet. They’re not putting his executive orders into place. We’ll see what they do on the spending, but we have such a narrow majority that to be trying to campaign other places and missing these votes is not something that’s advisable at all,” he said Monday.
Trump gave Donalds an enthusiastic endorsement in Florida’s 2026 gubernatorial race on Thursday, calling him a “highly respected congressman” and a “TOTAL WINNER.” Donalds suggested afterward that he would announce his run for governor soon.
DeSantis, who was buoyed by Trump’s endorsement in his 2018 run for governor, took the opportunity to weigh in on Donalds’s candidacy during a press conference on Florida’s state-level DOGE efforts.
“He just hasn’t been a part of any of the victories that we’ve had here, over the left, over these last years,” DeSantis said of Donalds. “He’s been in other states, campaigning, doing that, and that’s fine, but okay, well then deliver results up there.”
DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis, has been rumored as a 2026 gubernatorial contender. The Florida governor brought up his wife unprompted after a question about whether the person he picks to fill former Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nunez’s vacancy would be the person he’d endorse for the 2026 race.
“People ask me all the time about our wonderful first lady, who has done a fantastic job as first lady of Florida,” DeSantis said before commenting that there’s been a lot of chatter about his wife running in 2026.
“I won by the biggest margin that any Republican [has] ever won a governor’s race here in Florida. She would do better than me … she’s somebody that has the intestinal fortitude and the dedication to conservative principles that anything we’ve accomplished, she’d be able to take to the next level,” he continued.
DeSantis then spoke about an anecdote about how the late Rush Limbaugh said he’d rather have DeSantis’s wife as governor than him.
“And so, at the end of the dinner, he put his finger in my chest. He’s like, ‘The only person I would rather have as my Governor than you is her.’ And he pointed to her, and I was like, that’s a pretty good endorsement,” he said.
DeSantis is seemingly feeding into speculation that his wife is running despite prior reporting indicating she doesn’t want to, though she has received pressure to do so.
DeSantis’s wife rarely commented on her own candidacy and has redirected some of the praise toward her back to her husband.
“I will tell you this: when people talk about me running for governor, I think it speaks highly about the governor himself,” she told the Conservative Review podcast in May 2024. “I think when people see me, it is because they are so happy about everything that this governor has done for the state of Florida.”
“When people start talking about ‘Oh, you know, you should run,’ that’s because Gov. DeSantis is a rock star, and that’s because people are so proud of everything that he’s done for this state,” she added.
DeSantis said continuity of the state’s success is important, something that could be achieved with someone close to him installed as governor.
“We’re going to be looking to have somebody that’s going to be able to continue and build off the success that we’ve had here in Florida,” he said.
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DeSantis made his comments about Donalds during a press conference to announce the state will be creating its own DOGE task force, joining several other states in adding a DOGE-related plan.
He said the task force will audit the state’s education system along with state and local government. He added that artificial intelligence and IT technicians would be used to accomplish his government-slimming goals.