President Donald Trump speaks during a Republican campaign rally at F&M Bank Arena in Clarksville, Tennessee, October 10, 2026. REUTERS/Eric Lee
Bloomberg columnist Mary Ellen Klas unleashed a hard-hitting critique of the GOP as the party’s candidates wearily flub their way across the Florida landscape.
Republican gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds’ performance at Florid A&M University is only the start of a cadre of lazy Florida candidates representing what was the state’s once proud and vigorous party.
“Florida’s Republican Party — very much including its gubernatorial nominee — is a weak collection of stale rhetoric, failed ideas and vague plans,” reported Klas, the former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald.
When a FAMU student noted that Florida ranks 42nd in the nation on affordability, and asked what Donalds planned to do to improve things, the candidate droned on about the high price of property insurance, housing and healthcare. “But he offered no real fixes,” said Klas, beyond deregulation.
“Less regulation might help, but only if accompanied by industry reforms that prevent parent companies from siphoning off profits so their affiliates can justify higher premiums — details Donalds ignored,” said Klas.
Donalds' Democratic candidate proposes solutions like state-backed housing assistance and greater access to healthcare, as well as a state-backed property insurance fund to lower the state's sky-high insurance costs. He also supports new taxes on insurance industry profits and caps on the profits of investor-owned utility companies. But Donalds calls it all “government-run socialism,” while taking money from the industries that would feel the bite of these progressive policies.
“That’s the mindset that kept Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature from doing anything to prepare the state’s aging labor pool for a tech-torn future or addressing the growing number of uninsured Floridians crowding hospital emergency rooms,” said Klas. “They preferred to wage culture wars over gender identity, education policy and academic speech, distracting voters from their government grift — like DeSantis awarding contracts to donors to build the ill-considered and ill-fated “Alligator Alcatraz” immigrant detention center in the Everglades.”
"Donalds has made clear that he’s going to continue the governor’s “small-minded, transactional politics,” said Klas. “It’s why his $111 million campaign has received seven-figure donations from a casino mogul, a school-choice billionaire, a private prison operator, an electric monopoly, and a hedge fund manager.”
Nevertheless, Klas points out that Republicans remain the favorite in a state Trump won by 13 points in 2024.
“But most voters in Florida are unhappy with the president’s performance and have signaled they are restless with Republicans,” she added. Even Donalds scrubbed Trump’s name from his website, instead laboring to tie himself to local Republicans.
“[But] Donalds has repeatedly defended Trump’s Iran war, tariffs and handling of immigration,” said Klas. “If enough voters give Donalds the same kind of scrutiny he received at FAMU, he won’t be Florida’s next governor.”
