Florida Republicans may believe their gubernatorial primary is a formality. It isn’t.
At first glance, the race appears straightforward. Byron Donalds entered as the prohibitive favorite, armed with an early endorsement from Donald Trump that came even before Donalds officially declared. In today’s GOP, that kind of preemptive backing usually clears the field.
Instead, the opposite is happening.
Last week, Jay Collins joined the race, instantly giving Republican voters a well-funded, high-profile alternative. Former Florida House Speaker Paul Renner remains a factor as well. What once looked like a coronation now has the makings of a competitive—and potentially damaging—primary.
Veterans of Republican politics have seen this movie before. The dynamics increasingly resemble the 2012 GOP presidential primary, when Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum launched sustained attacks on Mitt Romney. Romney ultimately won the nomination, but not before his own party helped define him negatively for the general electorate.
That internal warfare paid dividends for Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. By the time Romney faced Obama, many independents and suburban voters had already absorbed a caricature of him as an out-of-touch corporate raider—fair or not. Even a dominant debate performance couldn’t fully undo the damage.
Florida Republicans should take that lesson seriously.
Donalds is still the likely nominee. But a drawn-out, negative primary will extract a cost. Every attack ad, every intra-party contrast, and every ideological litmus test narrows the candidate’s general-election appeal—especially among independents, who still decide close races in Florida.
It is tempting to point to Governor Ron DeSantis’s landslide re-election as evidence that Florida is now safely red. But that victory is the exception, not the rule. Outside of DeSantis’s blowout, Florida’s statewide elections over the past quarter-century have been remarkably close.
Yes, Republicans now hold a registration advantage. But registration does not equal persuasion. Independent voters remain skeptical, transactional, and highly sensitive to tone. A nominee who emerges from a bruising primary already labeled by opponents—sometimes by fellow Republicans—enters the fall campaign at a disadvantage.
If Donalds faces a competitive Democrat after months of internal attacks, and if Trump’s standing nationally is weakened heading into November, the risk becomes real. Under the right conditions, Republicans could lose the governor’s mansion for the first time in more than 25 years.
This primary is not just about who wins. It’s about how much political damage is inflicted along the way—and whether Republicans are repeating a mistake they’ve made before.