It took Byron Donalds, addressing a wildly supportive crowd at a rally in Florida’s bluest county, some time to list those he blamed for any “affordability” issues they might be experiencing. Joe Biden, and the radical policies of the Democrats, were at fault, the Republican nominee for Florida governor insisted in his stump speech at Broward county’s Green Glades West ranch, even though neither has wielded power in Washington for almost two years. Donalds also pointed a finger at other traditional betes noires of the modern Republican movement, New York’s democratic socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and the despised Dr Anthony Fauci.
Another to receive a lengthy verbal lashing was David Jolly, his opponent in a closely watched race that will help gauge the strength of a Democratic resurgence in a state that has veered reliably red in recent years. Yet one name – Donald Trump – remained conspicuously unspoken, as did any mention of the war in Iran, soaring gas prices, unaffordable healthcare premiums, or any number of issues that have caused the president’s approval rating to drop to new lows. How to handle Trump has become something of a conundrum for Donalds, an ultra-Maga, three-term Republican congressman, as he navigates a race that remains much closer than he would like it to be.
Such is the president’s unpopularity that the Donalds campaign made the decision last month to purge almost every mention of Trump from his campaign website, including the removal of “enact the Trump agenda” as his top priority as governor. That, and his notable reluctance to invoke his name, or policies, on the campaign trail, appeared to be working, until Trump announced that he would be coming to Fort Myers on Friday, a little more than a week from election day, on the latest stop of the president’s late red-state tour in support of vulnerable candidates. Some prominent Republicans seeking election have chosen to be elsewhere when Trump comes to town.
Perhaps in an effort not to be seen too closely aligned, the Texas governor, Greg Abbott, discovered an unavoidable commitment as Trump visited San Antonio this month. What kind of question is that?” he snapped at a reporter after last Friday’s joint rally with the Republican senator Ashley Moody, who is also on the 3 November ballot. Another journalist asked Donalds if his silence on Trump was a deliberate uncoupling from some of the president’s more unpopular policies, such as his immigration crackdown that is polling poorly with Florida’s large Latino and Hispanic voting blocs.
You guys are so caught up in, ‘Do you agree with this, do you agree with that?’” he said, not answering the question. But his snippy responses suggest he is aware that Trump is probably uppermost in voters’ minds as they decide whether to allow him to succeed Ron DeSantis, whose endorsement has replaced Trump’s on Florida TV ads, and extend the Republican grip on the governor’s mansion that dates to January 1999. Donalds’s speech last Friday, which was warmly received by the mostly white, middle-aged and above audience at the private ranch lodge resembling an upmarket Cracker Barrel restaurant on the edge of the Everglades, contained plenty of what they wanted to hear, and nothing that they didn’t.
He did not touch the wars in Iran or Ukraine, or gas prices. Any extra financial burden on Florida’s families, he said, could be laid at the door of “the craziness from the previous administration”. Political analyst Larry Sabato said the distancing was a ploy that will be quickly forgotten if Donalds wins.
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