Gov. Ron DeSantis stopped well short when asked if he'll hit the campaign trail with Congressman Byron Donalds (R-FL) against Democratic opponent David Jolly in his gubernatorial matchup while taking questions at a press conference in Orlando this week.
"Well, I'm definitely going to be doing state policy all the way until we turn the lights out. We're going to be very active," DeSantis said. "I believe when you get elected, you get elected to serve the full term. We told our agency heads and my staff no senioritis here."
Rep. Donalds was not specifically mentioned. Donalds won his Republican primary over Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, businessman James Fishback, and former Florida House Speaker Paul Renner with 48% of the vote on Tuesday night.
He will face Jolly in the general election on Nov. 3. Jolly handily won his Democratic primary over opponents Dayna Foster, Rep. Dotie Josesph (D-Miami), Evelyn Castillo-Bach, Thomas Fernandez and others with 61% of the vote.
"We want to get all the meat off the bone we can, and we're going to continue to work hard on that," DeSantis said. "It doesn't mean that I won't be involved. I mean, we had a lot of candidates win last night. Obviously, the statewide races we knew had a good sense of that."
This might not all be surprising.
Gov. Ron DeSantis criticized Donalds for "failing to defeat the left" during a press conference in Tampa in February 2025. Donalds also admitted to having a lukewarm relationship with DeSantis a few months later.
But at least Donalds could be coming around. Donalds praised DeSantis in a December 2025 interview to The Floridian and while taking questions on the Capitol steps the following spring.
Yet still not a ton of love from the governor, who credited himself for Florida's political turnaround. Florida was proverbial "swing state" when DeSantis won his first took office in 2019 before turning into a red state over the course of his two terms.
"No one's worked harder to get Florida to where we are politically than I have," DeSantis said.
DeSantis won his 2018 gubernatorial race over Democrat Andrew Gillum by less than a 1/2 percent. He followed that up with a massive 19-point victory over Democrat Charlie Crist in 2022 gubernatorial re-election bid.
Florida saw their overall Republican registrations increase over that time. The GOP currently holds a 5,607,836 - 4,066,503 advantage over Democrats as of July 31.
"Since I've gotten in, we've gone from hundreds of 1000s more registered Democrats in Florida, we now have 1.5 million more registered Republicans," DeSantis said "That's never happened anywhere in the United States of America at that scale."
Will DeSantis come around to helping Donalds? Time will tell.
The general election is Nov. 3.
