FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds won the Republican nomination for Florida governor and former Rep. David Jolly picked up the Democratic nod in primary elections Tuesday, setting the stage for a fall campaign to replace outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis and decide the state's future political direction.
Tuesday’s primaries gave final shape to a November ballot that will test President Donald Trump’s grip on his adopted state and Democrats’
ability to resurrect Florida as a national political battleground. Florida has moved notably to the right since Trump's first election win in 2016, though Democrats hope to regain ground from his slumping popularity ratings.
DeSantis, a leading conservative figure who has clashed and collaborated with Trump over the years, is barred from running for a third consecutive term after more than seven years in office.
Also Tuesday, progressive state Rep. Angie Nixon won the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate special election, defeating retired Army Lt. Col Alex Vindman, a onetime National Security Council official who testified in Trump’s first impeachment in 2019. Nixon will face Sen. Ashley Moody, winner of the Republican nomination, in November to fill the last two years of Marco Rubio’s Senate term. Rubio left the seat to became Trump's secretary of state last year.
Donalds banked on Trump ’s endorsement Tuesday and hopes the president's backing will help him in November as he makes the case why he should be elected Florida's first Black governor. He defeated a former DeSantis running mate, Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, political newcomer James Fishback and others Tuesday.
The 47-year-old congressman Donalds told his supporters at a Universal Studios resort hotel that he’d heard from GOP rivals who pledged their help in winning the general election.
“The primary is over,” Donalds said. “Tonight we put aside our differences. Tonight we are one united Republican Party.”
The Democrats’ candidate for governor, Jolly, is a former Republican congressman who switched parties last year. He did not shy away from his partisan history -- or his straight down the center political beliefs -- as he addressed supporters Tuesday night.
“To my Democratic friends, thank you for welcoming me into the party,” he said, which got a “woo!” from the crowd.
Jolly’s speech detailed a platform that balances between both political parties: an embrace of capitalism and a lean government, but one that “needs to do its part to fill the gaps,” including in education and housing.
“As an old-school Republican, I talk about ending the culture wars not to celebrate some progressive platform,” he said, “but because I still believe in the old school Republican, Libertarian policy that government should simply stay out of your life, and stay out of your bedroom.”
In U.S. House primaries, Tuesday's biggest contest saw longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, defeat former U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and others in a redrawn south Florida district.
Wasserman Schultz, who is white, urged voters in the new, plurality Black district to help her go to Washington for a 12th term. Cherfilus-McCormick had sought a comeback after resigning earlier this year under a pending federal indictment and threat of House ethics sanctions.
There have been three elected Black governors in U.S. history. Yet the 47-year-old Donalds is more likely to tout his conservative credentials than the possibility of joining that select group as campaigning opens for November. He has promised to push tax cuts, overhaul Florida's insurance regulations to lower consumer costs and seek greater price transparency from healthcare providers.
Donalds talked Tuesday night of the economic struggles he and his wife Erica had when they were newly married. And while he ran with Trump’s endorsement, he has emphasized talk of Floridians’ economic hardships without blaming the president, saying he wants a state where people “can give your kids a better shot than you have.”
Meanwhile, Jolly is hoping to prove a party-switching former Republican can actually carry the Democratic banner in a state where that's failed before. Democrats nominated former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist in 2022 only to see him lose by nearly 20 percentage points to DeSantis.
Rich Chamberlin, a retiree in Port St. Lucie, said he supported Jolly in Tuesday's primary, spurred on by attack ads against him.
“I saw anti-Jolly ads. I said ‘Ok, if they are against him, then I must be for him,'" Chamberlin said, adding it didn't matter to him that Jolly was once a Republican.
Moody, a former state attorney general tapped for Rubio's seat in 2025, was already in a strong position as the appointed senator as she pursued the GOP nomination. DeSantis, when he named her to the seat, praised her as a law-and-order prosecutor ready to help Trump “shut the border,” tame inflation, and overhaul a federal bureaucracy “run amok.”
Democrats face a familiar theme of 2026 primaries, with the progressive Nixon confronting Vindman from the party's center-left establishment. Vindman's testimony in 2019 was notable in the Democrat-led House impeachment case that led to Trump's acquittal in the Republican-led Senate. Trump ousted Vindman afterward.
But Nixon faces a stiff challenge in November. Florida voters haven’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2012.
Serving in Congress since 2005 , she entered a new district — thanks to DeSantis' successful push for new congressional maps intended to boost Trump's midterm election prospects.
It’s not the first time Wasserman Schultz has had to sway new voters after Republicans tinkered with boundaries. But this time she was the only white candidate in a plurality Black district — the redrawn Florida 20th, concentrated in the most diverse parts of South Florida's Broward County. It's the most Democratic House district in Florida, meaning she will be a prohibitive favorite in November.
Her four Black primary opponents — including Cherfilus-McCormick — had argued that the district requires a Black representative. But the voters went with a candidate who touted long experience from serving in Congress since 2005.
Surrounded by her campaign staff Tuesday night, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz tearfully thanked voters for having confidence in her.
“(I will work) to make all of you proud, to make sure that the people we spoke to all across this district know that I will fight so they can pay their rent,” Schultz said.
In other races, former television news reporter Ryan Elijah won the Republican nomination for Florida’s 7th Congressional District, ousting scandal-plagued U.S. Rep. Cory Mills.
A two-term congressman, Mills had spent months denying allegations of domestic violence against a former girlfriend and other controversies. Among allegations, Mills has denied accusations that he abused a former girlfriend.
Florida Republicans including DeSantis had abandoned Mills ahead of the primary. Now Elijah advances to the general election in a central Florida district that is considered reliably Republican.
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Associated Press reporters Gisela Salomon in Miami and David Fischer in Port St. Lucie, Florida, contributed.
