Donalds defeats Jolly, becoming Florida’s first Black governor

Byron Donalds made history Tuesday by defeating Democrat David Jolly to become the nation’s first Black Republican governor, as well as the first Black person ever elected statewide in Florida. 

The race was extremely close, with Donalds winning 50.1% of the vote over Jolly’s 48.7%, with about 99% of votes counted, according to the Associated Press.

“This might be the shortest speech I’ve given on the campaign trail but it doesn’t need to be long. Tonight we celebrate, tomorrow we work, and over the next four years we’re going to take Florida to a whole new level,” Donalds told a crowd  that celebrated his victory at the Seminole Hollywood Hard Rock Hotel in Davie.

President Donald Trump was the second person to congratulate him after the final results. The first call came from Jolly.

“Mr. President, I want you to hear from Florida that we are still red,” Donalds said, recalling his conversation with Trump.

Headed into Election Day, Democrats were optimistic about a Blue wave, thinking they could recapture the governor’s mansion after a three-decade absence and also defeat Republican Florida Cabinet members who’d been appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis to fill vacant positions. 

That did not happen.

Concession

The narrow win by Donalds was reminiscent of the 2010s, when Republicans Rick Scott in 2010 and 2014 and Ron DeSantis in 2018 won extremely close one-point (or closer) decisions over their Democratic opponents.

Donalds, like his predecessor, will have the benefit of a Republican controlled Legislature — albeit a body in which the Democrats no longer are in the superminority.

Donalds enjoyed a massive fundraising advantage over Jolly. He raised nearly $174 million combined between his regular campaign account and his political committee, Friends of Byron Donalds. Jolly raised less than $28 million.

A Jolly aide spoke bitterly afterwards that outside Democratic groups sent little money to fund his campaign.

Speaking to supporters at the Tampa Convention Center, Jolly said, “Yes, we have lost this election tonight, but we have not lost the fight in any of us. You are here tonight because you believed 18 months ago and you still believe that this is possible, that we can build a coalition that can break through the moneyed interests in our politics. That can break through the special interests. The vitriol. The ugliness.”

He later said that he had spoken with Gov.-elect Donalds.

“I said, ‘Governor-elect, I only ask that you consider that the people that emerged in our coalition that voted for Gwen Graham and David Jolly tonight, please know that they are not radical, communists, socialists,’ I said. ‘They’re now your constituents.’ And what we ask … is that they put the people of the entire state ahead of people of the party, or an ideology or an agenda.”

Florida voters last elected a Democrat for governor when they chose Lawton Chiles in November 1994 and, even then, the governor had to work with a Republican-controlled Legislature beginning in 1996, midway through his second term.

Pre-election polls in Florida showed that the results would more likely reflect 2018 (when Ron DeSantis narrowly defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum) than 2022, when DeSantis won his re-election bid by 19 percentage points over Democrat Charlie Crist.

That was when the Florida Republican Party put in a massive effort to get the vote out in hopes of creating momentum for a DeSantis presidential candidacy in 2024.

Cabinet races

Along with the governor, Florida’s Cabinet includes the state attorney general, chief financial officer, and commissioner of agriculture. DeSantis appointed then-attorney general Ashley Moody to Congress to fill the seat vacated by Marco Rubio. He appointed his then-chief of staff, James Uthmeier, to fill the post.

And when CFO Jimmy Patronis ran for Congressional District 1, it left another vacancy on the Cabinet that DeSantis got to fill. For that position, he appointed former Sen. Blaise Ingoglia.

On Tuesday night, Uthmeier and Ingoglia were both re-elected. Uthmeier defeated Democratic hopeful José Javier Rodríguez, taking 51% of the vote. Ingoglia defeated Democrat Annette Taddeo, also with 51% of the vote.

“Here in Florida, we did something special,” Uthmeier said in his victory speech. “We recognized that there is a law that comes from God, the Father, that no man can supersede. There are parental rights to oversee the upbringing, the education, the healthcare of your kids. And that is something that is from God. No bureaucrat can supersede that.”

Republican Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, a former state Senate president who was first elected to the Cabinet in 2022, defeated Democrat Joey Mendoza Atkins — again, getting 51% of the vote.