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Mum on a Florida governor endorsement, has DeSantis created GOP bad blood?
When it comes to why the governor hasn’t backed Byron Donalds or anyone else for that matter, there are multiple theories from political analysts.
Prominent Republicans, nationally and statewide, got behind U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds and his $95 million war chest to be the next governor of Florida with one notable exception: Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Arguably the most popular Republican in the state, DeSantis has not only refused to endorse Donalds but is also ignoring Donalds’ chief challengers, Lt. Gov. Jay Collins and former state House Speaker Paul Renner. He is ghosting these candidates like a Tinder match after a first date.
“If you are thinking about what are you going to do after the election and you have future political ambitions, which most people assume the governor does, why do you want to get in the middle of an intra-party fight?” said Susan MacManus, retired University of South Florida professor and political analyst.
It’s primary season, and thus it’s a circling firing squad for both parties until the Aug. 18 vote and the dust settles. Still, political observers see cracks in the state GOP’s veneer.
DeSantis also has said he won’t campaign for the Republican-led Legislature’s property tax cut on November’s ballot because it veers from the one he proposed and there is evidence he recruited far-right candidate James Fishback to run against Donalds. DeSantis’ press office did not respond to a phone message and email seeking comment.
Is there a Florida GOP family feud and how bad has it gotten?
Collins is trying to get Fishback thrown off the ballot as a “carpetbagger.” At a Tallahassee court hearing on the matter Tuesday, July 21, Fishback taunted Collins’ senior campaign advisor John Cardillo and his entourage challenged Cardillo to a physical fight outside the courtroom.
“That’s Republican-on-Republican crime,” said Democratic activist Fergie Reid, whose Virginia-based 90-for-90 worked with Margie Stein’s Naples-based Florida Blue to field candidates in nearly every statewide Florida race this cycle. “This is serious dysfunction at the top of the party.”
U.S. Rep. Randy Fine, who has endorsed Donalds, said regarding DeSantis’ fence-sitting: “I think that DeSantis is a coward. I mean his team could have endorsed one of these people.”
Donalds is hitting the right notes on the matter, saying he would honored to gain the governor’s endorsement.
“I plan to carry Gov. DeSantis’ strong conservative agenda forward and defend the Florida dream from left-wing Democrats for years to come” he said Friday, July 24. “I would value the governor’s input on carrying that out.”
DeSantis apparently remains immune to the political shrapnel of his own making. A University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab poll found he enjoys a 57% job approval rating despite the $1 billion Alligator Alcatraz debacle or the Hope Florida scandal where $10 million from a state Medicaid settlement was improperly funneled through First Lady Casey DeSantis’ foundation.
“I believe the governor will help us win Republican majorities and Republicans across the state, and I’m going to let him choose that the timing of when he supports our team,” state GOP Chair Evan Power said.
Three reasons why Gov. DeSantis has not endorsed Byron Donalds
Aubrey Jewett is an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida and specializes in state politics, legislative relations and party polarization. When it comes to why DeSantis hasn’t yet gotten behind the Donalds steamroller, Jewett says there is not just one reason.
Reason 1: Maintaining relevance independent of President Trump, who endorsed Donalds fairly early.
“Gov. DeSantis didn’t want to look like he was jumping on that bandwagon,” Jewett said. “He wanted to be able to have independent influence, if not as a kingmaker.”
Reason 2: Donalds was never in DeSantis’ orbit.
“Donalds was elected to Congress and didn’t have much to do with the state Legislature when Gov. DeSantis was in office,” Jewett said.
DeSantis, at a press conference in February 2025, said, “You got a guy like Byron Donalds, he just hasn’t been part of any victories that we’ve had here over the Left over these last years.”
Donalds, though, had worked with DeSantis. DeSantis, according to CNN, also worked closely with Donalds’ wife, Erika, to expand Florida’s private school voucher program. Donalds also introduced DeSantis before the governor delivered his landslide victory speech on election night in 2022.
All that changed because of Reason 3: Donalds did not endorse DeSantis when he ran for president in 2024, instead throwing his support toward Trump.
“DeSantis is well known for keeping track of whether people support him or not,” Jewett said. “He has been quite direct and basically said his line item veto he would go after people who he felt were insufficiently supportive of him and his agenda.”
Another reason that DeSantis may be chafing is that at one point his wife, Casey, was considered a viable candidate before it was exposed that her charity was used to funnel the Medicare settlement to political action committees fighting 2024 ballot initiatives on abortion and marijuana.
DeSantis criticized Donalds for not debating challengers in a public setting
Besides threats of fisticuffs in the courtroom, the clearest sign that the GOP is not in lockstep presently came when the state party cancelled its debate in June because only Donalds met the polling and fundraising thresholds. DeSantis joined Renner, Collins and Fishback in denouncing the decision.
“I wouldn’t have qualified when I ran in ’18,” DeSantis said of the debate qualification criteria. “Having an open process and having people be able to have their say is always better than trying to engineer an outcome.”
Then there is the Fishback problem.
Fine, in an interview in June, said DeSantis’ advisor, Christina Pushaw, was the one who developed Fishback as a candidate. Pushaw has distanced herself from Fishback and the candidate has also denied the allegation. Fishback has faced widespread accusations of leveraging racist, antisemitic, and provocative rhetoric during his 2026 campaign, calling Donalds “a slave.”
Fine denounced DeSantis for wanting to include Fishback to be involved in the debate at the Hard Rock powwow.
“It is the ultimate decline, collapse of Ron DeSantis’ relationship with Jewish Floridians that he is calling for a neo-Nazi to speak at a Republican event, a real disaster for his legacy.”
MacManus believes Fishback will indeed be thrown off the ballot because he doesn’t meet residency requirements, but the state GOP ignores him at its own risk. “On one hand, he has engaged a very important demographic increasingly, which is younger voters. On the other hand, his language is not very helpful to Republican candidates or to the party itself.”
Dems: Republicans have other problems heading into Florida primaries
Reid, the Democratic activist, said the GOP is having problems beyond just the governor’s race.
In the southwest Florida congressional seat that Donalds is vacating, there are 10 Republican candidates, three of whom have criminal records and three of whom were previous congressmen from other states. One candidate, conservative firebrand and former U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn, has accused Republican congressional leaders of engaging cocaine-fueled orgies.
Over on the side of the state, U.S. Cory Mills is defending his seat while under investigation by the Department of Justice for unspecified reasons and facing a House inquiry into alleged campaign finance violations.
And it remains to be seen, Reid said, if Donalds’ previous arrests for bank fraud and drug trafficking will become an issue. “You have to look at a state like Texas to find this much Republican disarray,” he said.
Reid said that there are plenty of reasons for DeSantis to not endorse Donalds but that he has given the cold shoulder to his own lieutenant governor, Collins, is astounding. “Typically, you would pick the person who you want to succeed you to be the next governor so that your legacy can live on,” he said.
MacManus added, “Here’s this guy, and everyone assumed he was his hand-picked person, his successor. So the Collins people are extremely disappointed and angry.”
Pushaw, DeSantis’ pot stirrer, recently accused Collins’ wife, Layla, of operating numerous social media accounts that took potshots at the governor. She denied the accusation — though the accounts were deactivated.
Power, the state GOP chair, concedes that whether it be a nation or a state, factions eventually emerge when one party is in control of all three branches of government and enjoys a supermajority. It is the natural evolution of politics.
“Obviously, that is the challenge of being the party that is in control. If you look at history, the party in control has had these fights,” he said. “When people get more distracted by what offi
