Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds held a question-and-answer session inDelray Beach on Wednesday, Sept. 2, continuing a statewide push and signaling his campaign's confidence that once-reliably Democratic Palm Beach County could go his way in November.
More than 400 Donalds supporters packed the Dr. Andre Fladell Civic Center and listened as Donalds, who represents a Naples/Fort Myers-based district in the U.S. House, offered up red meat hits attacking Democrats as socialists and calling them "crazy."
"We're going to protect the Florida dream," he said. "We already know that the Democratic Party is crazy."
Palm Beach County's role in governor's race
It was Donalds' third campaign stop since securing the endorsement of Gov. Ron DeSantis, which the term-limited governor offered
during the Florida GOP Leadership Forum in Tampa on Sept. 1.
Donalds is pushing to follow in the footsteps of DeSantis, who, in 2022 became the first Republican to carry Palm Beach County in a gubernatorial election since 1986, when Bob Martinez defeated Steve Pajcic.
Gubernatorial campaign stops are carefully vetted both logistically and strategically, though Skylar Swanson, Donalds' press secretary, did not attach any strategic significance to the Delray Beach stop when asked about it.
"We're hitting everywhere in the state," Swanson said. "He's been crisscrossing the state, meeting voters everywhere."
Registered Democrats (308,948) still outnumber registered Republicans (300,447) in Palm Beach County, but what was once a huge margin has shrunk to about 8,500 voters, according to July 31 figures from the Florida Division of Elections.
The 2022 swing to DeSantis, who got 51.2% of the vote, was dramatic; Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee opposing DeSantis in his first run for governor in 2018, had won Palm Beach County with 58.2% of the vote.
Palm Beach County had been a Democratic stronghold in presidential elections, but Donald Trump came close to defeating Kamala Harris in the county in 2024, losing to her by less than a percentage point. Four years earlier, Joe Biden had crushed Trump in the county by nearly 13 percentage points and Hillary Clinton had swamped him by 15 percentage points in 2016.
Losing Palm Beach County would likely be a fatal blow to the prospects of Democratic Party nominee David Jolly. The path to victory for Democrats in Florida has long been to break even in the central part of the state and run up big margins in South Florida to offset losses in the Florida Panhandle. A Donalds win in Palm Beach County would wreck that plan, forcing Jolly to over-perform in areas of the state where Democrats have not as fared well.
Health insurance and the race for Florida's governor
That could be a tall order for Jolly, a former Republican congressman who voted against the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, and backed its repeal. The ACA is viewed by Democrats as a cornerstone piece of legislation, a crowning achievement of the Obama Administration that extended health care to millions of Americans.
Jolly, who quit the GOP in 2018 and registered as a Democrat in 2025, has changed his position on the legislation, which he now extolls as good public policy.
The ACA came up briefly during Donalds' stop near Delray Beach.
"The Affordable Care Act is not affordable," Donalds told the audience, adding that premiums are rising.
What Donalds did not say is that the ACA is more expensive for people because he and other Republicans voted to end the COVID-era enhanced subsidies established to help people afford coverage.
Ending those subsidies, which were a part of Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, caused ACA premiums to jump by 58%, according to a report by KFF, a nonprofit health care research and polling organization formerly known as the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The rising cost of health care, food, gas and housing has emerged as the overarching theme of this year's elections, but those topics were not the focus of voter questions during Donalds' Delray Beach stop.
Questions from the Delray Beach event
Instead, voters asked Donalds about ending anti-Semitism on college campuses, condominium regulations, judicial qualifications, prospects for future generations of Americans, property insurance, a private school for LGBTQ students, data centers, the Second Amendment and going back to Judeo-Christian values.
Donalds said his administration "will not tolerate anti-Semitism or bigotry on any of our campuses at all. You stand up to hate, and you stand up to crazy."
He said he does not support privatizing condo boards and would look into regulations regarding condo construction and administration. On judges, Donalds said he wants judicial nominees who understand that legislators make laws and courts interpret the law as passed, not as judges want it to be.
Future generations would be helped, Donalds said, by focusing more on math and reading and by expanding opportunities for students to learn a trade.
"Sending a kid to college does not guarantee success," he said.
Donalds praised DeSantis for signing tort reform, which he credited for dropping property insurance premiums. He added that, if Florida is not struck by a big hurricane this year, he expects premiums will continue to fall.
On a possible private school for LGBTQ students, Donalds said: "I know my sons wouldn't go." He called himself an "absolutist" who unequivocally backs the Second Amendment, and he said he agreed with those who believe the country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles.
The question on that topic gave Donalds a springboard to attack Sharia Law, a conservative framework of Islam that has become something of a GOP political boogeyman.
"We are fully committed to making sure Sharia Law has no place in Florida," said Donalds, who then pointed to western Europe as an "abyss" because immigration systems have allowed in people of different cultures.
That viewpoint is shared most enthusiastically in Europe by far-right groups that have little use for immigrants, including those from majority-Muslim and African nations.
Donalds on AI and data centers
Project Tango, an artificial intelligence data center proposed for the western communities, has roiled politics in Palm Beach County, and the issue resounds across the country. The growing use of AI has expanded the desire for large-scale processing centers that often use a lot of water and energy. That heavy water and usage, along with noise and long-term health safety concerns, has generated a backlash against data centers even as more and more people use AI in their day-to-day lives.
Donalds said he would respect home rule on data centers, and he noted that legislation DeSantis signed seeking to make sure homeowner energy bills don't rise because of a data center.
"We want to require data centers to have a closed-loop filtration system, so they are not taking water everyday out of our aquifers," he said. "It is state law today that, if it's available to use, that a data center would have to use reclaimed water from water treatment plants. That's common sense."
Donalds added: "We don't want it next to residential neighborhoods. I know that's been an issue here in Palm Beach County. We don't want it next to people's houses. That doesn't make any sense.
"Under state law today in Florida, local governments have the final say on permitting and allowing them to actually be built in a county. The state under current law is not allowed to preempt that. We are not going to change that law. We will respect local government and local rule and home rule when it comes to data centers. If a county doesn't want it, that's a decision of that county commission and the people of that county."
That answer wasn't enough for the Florida Democratic Party, which sent out a news release on Sept. 3 calling the GOP nominee Byron "Data Center" Donalds.
The party said Donalds has received more than $5 million in campaign support tied to data centers.
"Byron 'Data Center' Donalds couldn’t care less about the catastrophic consequences of data centers for everyday Floridians, as long as data center developers keep the campaign checks coming," Florida Democratic Party spokesperson Evan Ecklund said.
"Donalds has made it crystal-clear that he is all in on data center construction in Florida, but Floridians are not on board. Just like voters have strongly rejected data centers in their communities, they will do the same with 'Data Center' Donalds at the ballot box this November."
Wayne Washington is a journalist covering education and Riviera Beach development for The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at wwashington@pbpost.com. Help support our work; subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Byron Donalds stops in Delray, tackles AI data center question
