The Republican primary to replace DeSantis should be a formality: Rep. Byron Donalds holds Trump’s endorsement, most of the state GOP establishment, a commanding fundraising lead, and virtually no opposition on the airwaves. Instead, it’s become an increasingly ugly succession fight, driven almost entirely by DeSantis himself, who has refused to endorse Trump’s own chosen candidate.
It escalated into genuinely strange territory this summer: Christina Pushaw — a longtime DeSantis adviser who remains on the state payroll — and other DeSantis allies publicly accused Lt. Gov. Jay Collins’s wife, Layla, of secretly operating multiple anonymous social media accounts attacking the governor and his staff. Layla Collins denied it. The finger-pointing and public name-calling between the two camps played out on X for days. A senior Tallahassee administration official told CNN the Collins family has been a “constant source of drama,” predicting the primary marks a genuine breaking point within Florida’s Republican establishment.
This is the governor of the third-largest state in the country, using state-payroll staff to publicly accuse a sitting lieutenant governor’s spouse of running anonymous attack accounts — not exactly the “law and order, no drama” image Florida Republicans have spent years selling voters.