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.
But not Donalds.
“Of course I’m going to be there. 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.
“This is what I’m talking about. You guys are so caught up in, ‘Do you agree with this, do you agree with that?’” he said, not answering the question. “I was giving a speech about my campaign for governor because I’m running for governor.”
The distancing is a calculated gamble that may prove inconsequential anyway, given that registered Republican Florida voters outnumber Democrats by more than 1.5 million.
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.
“Donalds is super-Maga. This is just a campaign tactic being used by quite a few Republicans all across the country,” said Sabato, founder and director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics and author of the election analysis website Sabato’s Crystal Ball.
“Look, Donalds has no choice but to make the most out of Trump, but not be devoured by him. And you know it’s not easy to do. You’re walking a very fine line there.”
Democratic leaders point to Donalds’s ultra-conservative, pro-Maga positions during almost six years in Congress. They include refusing to certify Biden’s 2020 election win, arguing that undocumented immigrants are not entitled to due process, denying climate change is human-made, championing abortion restrictions, and opposing transgender women and girls in sport.
Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic party, told a press conference Thursday, one day before Trump’s Fort Myers, visit that Donalds is not fooling voters.
“Even when Byron Donalds tried to distance himself from Trump by scrubbing the president from his website, he went running back into Daddy’s arms within hours, but there is no hiding from this presidency,” she said.
“Tomorrow, Donalds and the rest of the Florida Republicans will once again reveal their true loyalties. The people of our state are tired of spineless politicians who kiss the ring and fall in line instead of standing up.”
But several attenders at the rally at the ranch, hosted by the environmentalist and businessman “Alligator” Ron Bergeron, a close ally of DeSantis, said they were unbothered by Donalds’s avoidance of any Trump talk.
“We’re all on the same page with our president supporting what is right,” said Luis Breton, a Republican voter and US citizen originally from the Soviet Union.
Stella Patrick said she saw Donalds and Moody as fighting for Florida’s interests, while Trump was busy “defending the nation”. The Fort Lauderdale retiree said: “Byron Donalds doesn’t need Trump’s blessing to win, and I’m happy he spoke about what he’s going to do for us in Florida. That’s what matters to me.”
To win and become Florida’s first Black governor, Donalds cannot afford to lose huge chunks of the alliance that helped Trump win the state at three successive presidential elections, including Black voters and Hispanics.
According to polls, Hispanic voters appear to be wavering about sticking with the Republican cause, favoring Donalds 48%-43% in an NBC6/Telemundo 51 survey published last week. Support from Black voters looks to have slipped away, the same poll giving Jolly a 76-10 advantage.
Meanwhile, Democrats nationally see a tightening race, and on Tuesday pledged an extra million dollars to bolster Jolly in late campaigning.
Sabato’s Crystal Ball, and Fox News, list the Donalds-Jolly contest as “leans Republican”.
Sabato said the days when Florida could be considered a purple state are long gone. “It’s not even close,” he said. “Trump won it easily, and so you can’t underestimate the Republican vote there, or overestimate the Democratic vote.”
