TALLAHASSEE, Fla. ― Eight years after nearly making the Democratic mayor of Tallahassee the state’s first Black governor, Florida voters are on the cusp of doing it again, only this time with a Naples congressman who rose to prominence by defending the most openly racist president in a century.
Byron Donalds had barely taken office in 2021 when he became a fixture on Fox News, praising Donald Trump in the aftermath of his coup attempt to retain power after losing the 2020 election. Donalds continued in that role during the years Trump faced various criminal charges for Jan. 6, 2021, for taking secret documents to his South Florida country club and for falsifying business records, becoming one of Trump’s highest-profile African American supporters.
And less than a decade after Andrew Gillum lost to Republican Ron DeSantis by just 32,000 votes in the 2018 governor’s race, Florida has become a dramatically more GOP-friendly state, meaning Donalds could theoretically glide to victory if he wins Tuesday’s primary thanks to Trump’s endorsement.
“Consenting to Trump’s racism is the price of admission for a Black Republican to MAGA World,” said Mac Stipanovich, a longtime Republican consultant and onetime chief of staff to GOP Gov. Bob Martinez who left the party after Trump’s rise.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Trump has a decades-long history of racism, from refusing to rent apartments to Black people to inciting anger against the so-called Central Park Five even after they were exonerated. A decade and a half ago, he was the most prominent spreader of the conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born outside the United States and therefore illegitimately elected to the White House.
As president, Trump has called nations in Africa “shithole” countries and pushed for the restoration of Confederate monuments. Two years ago, he falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants eat dogs and cats and, to this day, he regularly claims that all Somali immigrants are criminals. While on rare occasions he calls a white person “low IQ,” that insult is overwhelmingly one he uses against Black people, particularly Black women.
While it is impossible to know all the privately held views of presidents — and notwithstanding Trump’s claim that he is “the least racist person” in the world ― Trump has been the most overtly racist occupant of the White House since Woodrow Wilson.
In response to HuffPost’s query about Trump’s racism, Donalds’ campaign instead attacked the reporter for asking: “Congratulations on your latest diary entry. It’s a shame the DNC is broke — they should be paying you for your unfailing partisan loyalty,” spokesperson Gates McGavick wrote in a statement.
Donalds has, in past interviews, downplayed the significance of his race. “I’m aware of it, but I don’t really focus on it,” he told the CBS affiliate in Miami in March.
“Consenting to Trump’s racism is the price of admission for a Black Republican to MAGA World.”
– Mac Stipanovich, longtime Republican consultant who left the party
Now 47 and completing his third term in Congress after a career as a financial adviser, Donalds has consistently led in polls of the Republican primary since he began his campaign a year ago, thanks to Trump’s early endorsement, and is favored to defeat Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, former House Speaker Paul Renner, and antisemitic racist James Fishback, who in a January social media post wrote about Donalds: “By’rone wants to turn Florida into a Section 8 ghetto.”
Donalds has tried to downplay that and other attacks. “Honestly, I just think it’s somebody trying to get more attention than anything else. So I really don’t pay much attention to him,” he told CBS.
Tuesday’s primary election is also likely to mark the beginning of the end of the Ron DeSantis era in Florida politics. The governor, who barely won his election in 2018 but then made a national name for himself by loudly attacking COVID restrictions and “woke” policies, will leave office without a successor committed to his legacy or an obvious career move.
DeSantis’ wife, Casey DeSantis, had originally been talked up as a candidate to succeed him, but that fell apart after revelations that her charity funneled $10 million from a Medicaid settlement to political committees for the purpose of opposing ballot initiatives on abortion access and recreational marijuana.
DeSantis was then expected to endorse his own lieutenant governor, Collins, whom he had elevated to that role from the state Senate after his original running mate left last year to take a job running Florida International University. Instead, though, the governor has declined to endorse at all ahead of the primary, although he did recently praise Renner, who, if polling is correct, is unlikely to break single digits on Tuesday.
What DeSantis does next is unclear. He ran for president in 2024 but finished a distant second in Iowa after spending $35 million there and $160 million overall. He dropped out soon afterward. While some Republicans expect him to run again in 2028, he has not announced that intention.
Whoever wins the GOP primary on Tuesday will almost certainly face David Jolly, the former GOP congressman who left the party after Trump took it over and is running without serious opposition in the Democratic primary.