Florida has emerged as one of the more surprising battlegrounds of the 2026 midterm gubernatorial elections amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s sagging approval rating, high gas prices and nationwide cost-of-living issues.
Recent polls suggest that the race to succeed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who won nearly 60% of the vote in 2022, could be close in November despite an enormous Republican advantage in voter registration in the Sunshine State.
JNS spoke with Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.), the GOP nominee for governor, about the race as he seeks to lead what DeSantis once called “the most Israel-friendly state in the country.”
“A lot of Jewish Floridians—many of them have come to Florida to escape New York and escape other states, and they came here for freedom and opportunity,” Donalds said. “They came here to be safe, and I just want to assure them that the standards that they came for are going to continue.”
First elected to the House in 2020, Donalds represents a district in southwest Florida that includes the cities of Naples and Fort Myers. He is facing off against David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who became a Democrat in 2025.
Both candidates are pro-Israel but have differed on Trump’s actions against Iran.
On the day Trump commenced hostilities, Jolly wrote that the president “lacks the clear support of Congress or our allies, and lacks the unity of the nation he leads.”
Donalds supports the Trump administration and believes that gas prices will decline when the war concludes.
“When it comes to the Iranian conflict, I think the president is right,” Donalds told JNS. “They can’t have a nuclear weapon.”
“This used to be a completely American view until this election cycle, where the Democrats basically say, ‘Oh no. It’s OK if the Iranians have free rein,’” he said. “No, that is a theocratic dictatorship, and they need to be stopped from having a nuclear weapon.”
He hammered Jolly for what he said was a record of political flip-flopping.
“David Jolly has been on every side of every issue in the last decade,” Donalds told JNS. “Why would you trust somebody who made so many drastic changes in what they say they believe?”
As a former Republican, Jolly represents one theory for how Democrats can seek to win back Florida in a statewide race after nearly 30 years of GOP control of the governor’s mansion and seven years since Florida elected a Democrat to the Senate.
At the other end of the spectrum for Democrats is Angie Nixon, a Florida state representative and member of the Democratic Socialists of America whom the Democratic electorate tapped to be its nominee in November’s special Senate election.
Donalds told JNS that Republicans wouldn’t tolerate a candidate like Nixon, who has accused Israel of committing “genocide” in Gaza.
“You won’t see David Jolly criticize Angie Nixon about her stance,” he said. “This is a very radical party with socialism at the cornerstone of their policy ideas, and they are demonstrating very clearly that they are no friend to Israel at all.”
Donalds believes that Democrats are now trying to minimize their divisions over Israel to have it both ways with Jewish voters.
“A lot of people are saying, ‘Oh well, the Democrats really aren’t talking about it right now,’” he told JNS. “That’s because they know that their rhetoric and their antisemitism has really soured on Jewish voters, and so I believe the memo went out and they’ve been very quiet—not to talk about Israel—even though it is clear that that party is becoming more and more anti-Israel as the day goes by.”
Democrats have proven more willing to nominate anti-Israel candidates, but it is increasingly clear there is an Israel-skeptical wing of the Republican Party as well.
Donalds won the Republican gubernatorial primary handily in August, but that race saw James Fishback, an alt-right investor who invoked antisemitic memes and used racial insults against Donalds, win more than 10% of the vote.
Donalds told JNS that he believes those votes were, in part, the result of a social media landscape that often scapegoats foreign countries for American domestic problems, and that the solution is to engage voters with bread-and-butter politics.
If Fishback is an aberration, polls suggest that Jewish voters find it more difficult to dismiss concerns about U.S. Vice President JD Vance, who has refused to condemn his friend Tucker Carlson and has been perhaps the most critical of Israel of any member of the Trump administration.
A poll of Jewish voters in September found that 82% of respondents had a negative view of the vice president, against just 14% with a positive opinion.
Vance campaigned with Donalds on Thursday in Lakeland, Fla., as part of a pre-election red-state tour that has seen the president and vice president campaign in Alaska, Florida, Oklahoma and Texas.
Donalds told JNS that he hasn’t spoken with Vance about his views on Israel or his friendship with Tucker Carlson, who has hosted antisemitic guests on his podcast and who has made anti-Israel statements often.
“It’s more than likely that those voters will have an opportunity to weigh in if the vice president decides to take the next step and try to run for president,” Donalds said, of Jews who have concerns about Vance.
Some Jewish Republicans may be skeptical of the self-described “realist” foreign policy views of Vance, but Donalds said that those discussions are “not even close” to what has happened in the Democratic Party on Israel.
“In the Republican Party, there is some debate about how independently our foreign policy decisions are being made,” he told JNS. “My point has always been: Do you know Donald Trump? Have you met the man? Nobody tells Donald Trump what to do.”
Donalds laughed when JNS asked whether he had any thoughts about endorsing Vance or fellow Floridian and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a hypothetical 2028 matchup.
“Man, I’m focused on the next 29 days. I’m trying to win a race for governor,” he said. “The presidency will take care of itself. It always does.”
In that race, he said that a mixture of politics and geography has contributed to Florida ranking among the fastest-growing states economically and in terms of population in recent years.
“Common sense, safe communities and safe streets, no state income tax, a very friendly business climate and our weather is phenomenal,” Donalds said.
“At its core, where Florida has really distinguished itself, and you have to credit Gov. DeSantis with this, is that Florida is always going to make sure that our people are free, that we’re not going to have a situation where you’re going to have government come in and start dictating what you can and can’t do,” he told JNS.
He espoused a simple guideline for how to keep his state on that track if he is elected in November.
“Part of the way we know how to do the right thing in Florida is we see New York and California do something, and we do the opposite,” he told JNS.
