The Republican congressman makes history in a state where pre-election polling showed overwhelming Black support for his Democratic opponent, David Jolly.
By EEW Magazine Political Editors
Byron Donalds, now Florida’s governor-elect, speaks to the Hispanic Police Officers Association in Doral, Fla., after receiving the group’s endorsement on Aug. 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell)
Florida voters have chosen the first Black governor in the state’s 181-year history. Republican Byron Donalds narrowly defeated Democrat David Jolly on Tuesday, NBC News and Decision Desk HQ projected, and becomes the first Black Republican ever elected governor in the United States. He will succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis in January, with former state Sen. Bryan Avila of Hialeah as his lieutenant governor.
Before the 2026 elections, only three Black Americans had won a governor’s race, all of them Democrats: Douglas Wilder of Virginia, Deval Patrick of Massachusetts and Wes Moore of Maryland. Republican P.B.S. Pinchback served about five weeks as Louisiana’s governor in 1872 after the sitting governor was removed, though he never won the office at the ballot box.
Donalds said in a statement on X that he was “humbled and grateful beyond measure.” He added, “As your Governor, I will give you everything I have.”
The victory carries a tension EEW Magazine has followed since August, when Donalds’ primary win complicated a long-held claim that Republican voters will not back Black candidates. In October, the magazine examined the hostility Black conservatives face when they break from expected political loyalties.
Polls throughout the fall showed Jolly with a wide lead among Black voters. A Mason-Dixon poll for NBC6 in early October put it at 76% to 10%.
Supporters hold signs at a campaign event for Democrat David Jolly and his running mate, former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham. (Photo courtesy of the Jolly campaign)
Jolly made the gap a campaign theme. He called Donalds’ policies “anti-Black,” citing his vote against the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and his positions on access to capital for minority-owned businesses. Asked in October whether it worried him that he was winning only about 80% of Black voters, Jolly answered, “Not as concerned as Byron should be that he’s only getting 9% of his own community.”
Donalds called the charge “gaslighting.” At a Daytona Beach campaign stop, he answered it with a joke: “Breaking news: Your next governor has been Black his entire life.”
Donalds has long rejected the idea that race should decide a voter’s party. At a September town hall at Florida A&M, students booed his defense of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. He urged them to stop voting as a bloc for Democrats.
Byron Donalds, now Florida’s governor-elect, speaks at the final stop of his Defending the Florida Dream bus tour at Sugarshack Downtown in Bonita Springs, Fla., on Monday, Nov. 2, 2026. (AP Photo)
His campaign built a coalition of Black preachers, police officers, lawmakers, teachers and business owners to make his case in churches, barbershops and on college campuses.
Some Black Democratic officials endorsed him. Gainesville City Commissioner Cynthia Moore Chestnut, a former state legislator, called her endorsement “a declaration that Black voters are not political property.
Critics point to his support for restrictions on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and his 2024 remarks on the Jim Crow era. At a Trump campaign event that year, Donalds said Black marriage rates were higher under Jim Crow than at any point since, and he argued that Lyndon Johnson’s anti-poverty programs contributed to the decline. The Congressional Black Caucus accused him of embracing “racist ideologies.” Donalds said he was not being “nostalgic.”
A PolitiFact review found some statistical evidence for his point about marriage rates. It also found that some Democratic descriptions of his remarks were overbroad. Experts told PolitiFact the decline had several causes, and they said his claim that Black Americans voted conservatively during Jim Crow could not be proven.
Byron Donalds will take office as Florida’s governor in January, succeeding term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis. (Photo courtesy of the Donalds campaign)
The margin was far tighter than DeSantis’ nearly 20-point reelection win in 2022. Florida has seen this kind of race before. In 2018, DeSantis defeated Democrat Andrew Gillum, who was seeking to become the state’s first Black governor, by about 32,000 votes. Republicans have won every governor’s race in Florida since 1998 and hold a voter registration edge of about 1.5 million.
Jolly is a former Republican congressman who later became a Democrat, and he campaigned as a centrist. He proposed a state-backed catastrophe fund to take a larger role in hurricane and wind coverage, a one-year moratorium on new data centers, Medicaid expansion and a major reinvestment in public schools. His running mate was former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, daughter of the late Gov. Bob Graham.
Donalds was raised by a single mother in Brooklyn and came to Florida at 17 “with a trunk full of clothes,” as he put it in August. He entered politics through the Tea Party movement in 2010 and won a seat in Congress in 2020. President Donald Trump endorsed his run for governor before he formally entered the race, and DeSantis endorsed him in September.
Donalds campaigned on affordability. He pledged to cut property insurance costs by another 20% to 25% through regulatory changes rather than a new state fund. He backed local control over data centers. He also supports Florida’s six-week abortion ban and school choice.
In his victory statement, he made a pledge. “We are going to make life in Florida more affordable. We are going to keep our streets safe,” he wrote.
Donalds will take office with a Republican Legislature and the broad executive power DeSantis built over eight years. His first year will test his central promises. He has pledged to use the state’s Taxation and Budget Reform Commission, which convenes in 2027, to review every tax and fee in Florida, with the long-term goal of eliminating homestead property taxes. Any such change would require a constitutional amendment approved by at least 60% of voters.
This story has been updated with a statement from Gov.-elect Byron Donalds.