Gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds is reminding voters that his ties to Gov. Ron DeSantis date back to the term-limited incumbent’s first statewide run.
At a get-out-the-vote event in Niceville, the Naples Congressman recalled helping DeSantis in his 2018 campaign against Democrat Andrew Gillum.
“Back in 2018, I was on the debate prep team for then-Congressman DeSantis in the General Election,” Donalds said.
He wasn’t the only familiar name in the room. Richard Corcoran — the former House Speaker who went on to serve as Education Commissioner and now leads New College as President — was on the team, Donalds said. So was Matt Gaetz, the former Congressman turned talk show host.
DeSantis apparently appreciated the help. Soon after beating Gillum, the new Governor urged Donalds, then a state legislator, to run to chair the Republican Party of Florida.
The relationship has cooled since. DeSantis has questioned Donalds’ ideological purity, saying last year that Donalds wasn’t “a part of any of the victories that we’ve had here over the left over these last years.”
But despite his qualms with the Donald Trump endorsee — and despite blasting the lack of debates between the front-runner and the rest of the field as “ridiculous” and a “farce” that shuts voters out ahead of the Primary — the Governor hasn’t endorsed any of Donalds’ opponents, such as Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, businessman James Fishback or former House Speaker Paul Renner.
“Being Governor is different than winning Governor,” DeSantis said last week.
“And honestly, what goes into winning it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be a good Governor, because a lot of it is name recognition. And the way to get name recognition in a really big state is you either have to pay for it by buying advertising, or you have to generate a lot of free media, which is hard in a state this big, because we have so many different media markets. You could make a splash in Southwest Florida, people in Jacksonville aren’t going to know about that, right? And so it’s just very difficult.”
Donalds, for his part, has said he looks forward to having DeSantis’ “endorsement and being out there on the campaign trail with him.” Time will tell when the healing begins.
A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. His work also can be seen in the Washington Post, the New York Post, the Washington Times, and National Review, among other publications. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski
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