Byron Donalds built Florida’s dominant Republican coalition through service, discipline, and America First leadership; James Fishback built a single-digit campaign from smears, racial provocation, and political sewage
LUTHMANN NOTE: Byron Donalds became the overwhelming favorite for governor because he earned it through years of conservative service, loyalty under fire, political discipline, and a real connection to Southwest Florida. President Trump’s endorsement didn’t hurt either. Donalds and his accomplished wife, Erika, offer Florida a formidable governing partnership grounded in faith, family, education, freedom, and economic opportunity. James Fishback earned something else. His single-digit campaign descended into racial provocation and a sensational allegation that Trump’s Justice Department publicly rejected. Fishback can retract the smear, apologize, and stand down. The alternative leads directly toward the political ashes occupied by Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie. This piece is “Byron Donalds Built a Movement.”
By Richard Luthmann
Donalds Built The Winning Coalition
(FORT MYERS, FLORIDA) — Byron Donalds earned the Republican nomination for governor long before the August 18 primary. He earned it in the Florida House, in Congress, across Southwest Florida, and in the national battles that transformed him into one of the America First movement’s strongest voices.
He earned it by defending President Donald Trump when loyalty carried a price, explaining conservative principles with clarity, and refusing to bend before the Washington ruling class. Florida Republicans watched the work. They reached their conclusion.
The RealClearPolitics polling average places Donalds at 47.5 percent, a crushing 34-point lead over Lt. Gov. Jay Collins. James Fishback sits at 9 percent, while former House Speaker Paul Renner trails at 4.5 percent. Donalds built a statewide political machine with the money, organization, endorsements and voter enthusiasm to flatten a crowded field. His opponents are fighting over the scraps beneath his table.
The November picture looks nearly as commanding. An Echelon Insights survey gave Donalds a six-point advantage over Democrat David Jolly, while Stetson University measured a seven-point lead. Donalds enters the general election as the favorite in a state that has rejected Democratic cultural radicalism, economic incompetence, and managed decline.
The late Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards once said he could lose only if caught in bed with “a dead girl or a live boy.” Donalds has reached similar political territory. A catastrophe could derail him. Ordinary campaigning will not.
Erika Donalds strengthens the package. She brings experience in investment management, accounting, public education and conservative school reform. She served on the Collier County School Board, participated in Florida’s Constitution Revision Commission, and built organizations promoting charter schools, classical education, educational competition and parental choice. Her work reflects the same principle that drives the America First movement: families deserve control over their children’s futures, and entrenched bureaucracies must answer to the people paying the bills.
Erika will make a great first lady because she already understands Florida policy, Florida families, and the education establishment’s appetite for control. She has built institutions, challenged monopolies, and fought for alternatives. Byron and Erika have raised three sons in Naples while developing careers rooted in faith, family, free enterprise, and public service.
President Trump examined the field and placed his “Complete and Total Endorsement” behind the candidate who had already proven himself. That endorsement confirmed Donalds’ strength and slammed the door on the remaining GOP doubters.
Trump called Byron a “TOTAL WINNER” and told Florida Republicans, “HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN.” The record supports every word.
The August primary supplies the paperwork. Byron Donalds earned the Republican nomination for the Governor’s Mansion.
Byron Donalds Built a Movement: The Florida Dream Needs Property-Tax Relief
Donalds’ rise began years before this campaign. He worked in finance and banking, served in the Florida House from 2016 through 2020, and won election to Congress from a crowded Republican field. Since arriving in Washington, he has become a disciplined and formidable defender of border security, economic freedom, parental rights, American energy, the Second Amendment, and President Trump’s agenda.
He communicates directly, absorbs hostile interviews without folding, and makes the conservative case to voters the old Republican Party routinely surrendered.
His gubernatorial agenda addresses the burdens Florida families face every day: property taxes, insurance premiums, housing affordability, public safety, water management and infrastructure. Donalds understands Southwest Florida’s explosive growth and the pressure it places on native Floridians, working families and small businesses. His record connects conservative principles to the practical work of governing a state with more than 23 million residents.
Florida’s economic success has driven property values upward while local governments collected the resulting windfall. Homeowners watched their tax bills climb alongside insurance premiums, utility charges, groceries, and housing costs. Young couples who did everything right now struggle to purchase their first home. Retired Floridians fear being taxed out of homes they paid for decades ago. Donalds has identified the pressure point and offered an aggressive governing plan.
Donalds has pledged to pursue sweeping property-tax relief for Florida homeowners regardless of what happens to Amendment 3 in November. The amendment would increase the homestead exemption for most non-school property taxes from $50,000 to $150,000 in 2027 and $250,000 in 2028. It also directs lawmakers toward a process that could ultimately eliminate homestead property taxes.
“What it would do is raise our homestead exemptions to $150,000 next year and $250,000 the year after that,” Donalds said. “Listen, property taxes have increased in our state. They’ve doubled over the last six years. We have to find ways to provide that relief. This amendment does that… Whether it passes or fails this November, we’re going to bring it back as governor.”
Donalds plans to establish a tax and budget reform commission to examine property taxes and government fees, develop options for fully repealing homestead property taxes and guarantee meaningful relief for seniors on fixed incomes and young families trying to build the Florida dream.
Fishback Crawled Into The Sewer
Jay Collins and Paul Renner ran honorable campaigns. Collins is a former Green Beret and decorated combat veteran who continued serving after losing a leg. Renner is a Navy veteran and former Florida House speaker with a substantial record involving school choice, tax relief, gun rights, and opposition to WOKE ideological capture.
They offered their résumés, challenged Donalds on policy, and gave Republican voters respectable alternatives. They can support the nominee and continue serving Florida while maintaining their reputations.
James Fishback earned the gutter.
Fishback attacked Donalds as a “slave” to corporate interests, choosing a racially radioactive word against a Black Republican and later claiming he meant economic servitude. Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier called the attack “gross” and declared that such rhetoric had no place in Republican politics. Fishback answered the criticism by descending further.
He promoted a sensational claim connecting Donalds to a supposed federal sex-trafficking investigation involving Congressman Cory Mills. Donalds called it a “completely false, baseless and defamatory sideshow.”
Trump’s Justice Department crushed the allegation with one unequivocal statement: “This claim is not true. Congressman Byron Donalds is not under investigation.”
Fishback owed Donalds and Republican voters an immediate retraction. He allowed the smear to circulate while his single-digit campaign clawed for attention. The allegation supplied lurid headlines, social-media engagement and political poison. It supplied no evidence.
Ronald Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment warned Republicans against speaking ill of one another. Fishback took a sledgehammer to it. His campaign replaced governing ideas with personal provocation and substituted tabloid innuendo for a serious argument against Donalds.
Fishback presents himself as America First while attempting to damage the candidate President Trump selected and MAGA voters overwhelmingly prefer. That contradiction has consumed his candidacy.
Donalds earned the commanding heights. Fishback earned the sewer beneath them.
The Greene-Massie Road Ends In Ashes
Marjorie Taylor Greene and Thomas Massie already demonstrated what happens when Republican politicians confuse personal notoriety with power. Greene rose through Trump’s movement, built her national identity as a MAGA firebrand, and eventually decided her own brand deserved top billing. Her break with Trump produced denunciations, a withdrawn endorsement, and her January 2026 departure from Congress.
The movement continued marching. Greene’s congressional career became smoke behind it.
Massie followed the same road with a libertarian sermon tucked under his arm. He repeatedly opposed Trump’s agenda and wagered that his personal following could withstand the president’s determination to remove him. Trump endorsed Ed Gallrein. MAGA forces mobilized. Massie lost the Republican primary 55 percent to 45 percent and now prepares to surrender the congressional seat he held for 14 years.
Greene and Massie behaved like unbridled loons who believed the America First army was theirs. Their congressional careers now rest in smoldering ashes. Trump remains in command.
Fishback is accelerating toward the same fire with far less political capital. He polls at 9 percent, attacks Trump’s chosen candidate, and clings to an allegation Trump’s Justice Department declared untrue. His campaign has become a public demonstration of how quickly ambition curdles into self-destruction.
One exit remains. Fishback can retract the sex-trafficking smear, apologize to Byron and Erika Donalds, suspend his campaign, and endorse the Republican nominee. He can help defeat the Democrats and preserve some future inside the movement.
Continued defiance will earn Fishback the political-insurrectionist label: a self-appointed MAGA warrior firing into MAGA’s own lines because Republican voters rejected him. Greene discovered how that story ends. Massie received the same lesson at the ballot box.
Fishback can learn from the wreckage or join it.
Byron Donalds earned the Governor’s Mansion. James Fishback earned the gutter.
FL Gulf News endorses Byron Donalds both as the GOP Candidate (Tuesday, August 18) and for Governor of Florida (Tuesday, November 3).
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