Jesse Scheckner
With Donald Trump reportedly considering Ron DeSantis to lead the Pentagon, the job of Florida Governor could soon shift to Jeanette Nuñez, the state’s Lieutenant Governor.
She would be Florida’s first woman Governor and the first person of Cuban descent to hold the job.
And based on her efforts as a state lawmaker, she would bring more moderate tendencies to the state’s executive branch.
Post-election polling in November found that among five Republicans that won or hold statewide offices — including Trump, DeSantis, Nuñez and U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio and Rick Scott — Nuñez was alone in having a positive approval rating.
But the survey also revealed she has a relatively low name ID, with 47% of voters saying they didn’t know who she was and 26% having no opinion about her job performance.
So who is Nuñez? Here’s what to know:
Early life and professional history
Nuñez, a 52-year-old Republican, was born in Miami on June 6, 1972. Her father, Victor Sanchez, was a Cuban exile who left Havana 11 years earlier after learning he could be punished for holding views oppositional to dictator Fidel Castro.
Nuñez and her husband, Adrian, have been married for 27 years and have three children.
Nuñez earned a bachelor’s degree in political science and international relations and a master’s degree in public administration from Florida International University. After she completed her undergraduate studies in 1994, she worked as an aide to then-state Sen. Alex Díaz de la Portilla, whose most recent elected job was as a Miami City Commissioner.
In 2004, she began working as Director for Statewide Government Relations at Jackson Health System, Miami-Dade County’s public hospital network. Six years later, she took a Vice President of Community Affairs job with for-profit hospital company HCA Healthcare, overseeing outreach for the Kendall Regional Medical Center and Aventura Hospital and Medical Center.
She started a consulting firm called OnPoint Strategies LLC in 2013 that did business with Jackson Health System. State records show the firm became inactive in 2020.
Lawmaking career
Nuñez ran for the Florida House in 2010 and won by a landslide, taking 63% of the vote in a three-way race for a district that spanned a western swath of unincorporated Miami-Dade, including the Kendall area.
She served for eight straight years, including as Speaker Pro Tempore and Deputy Whip.
As a lawmaker, Nuñez leveraged her knowledge of the health care industry to successfully sponsor several notable bills, including legislation to extend Florida’s sovereign immunity protections to university doctors working at public hospitals, improve umbilical cord blood banking provisions, add more guardrails to optometric practices and establish equitable insurance standards for patients seeking cancer treatment.
She also passed bills to improve Florida’s programming for diabetes management and treatment and address opioid addiction in health insurance.
Other bills she saw through to passage included multiple measures aimed at better serving and housing sexually exploited children, removing the statute of limitations for victims of child sex abuse, banning marriage for underage couples and heightening programming requirements for domestic abusers seeking probation.
Another law that was among her signature legislative achievements in 2014 allows undocumented students brought to the country as children to pay in-state tuition rates at state universities. She said at the time that the measure was “about upward mobility” for young adults on whom the state had already spent “tens of thousands of dollars” to educate in public schools, adding, “It doesn’t make sense to hold these children back.”
DeSantis tried, but failed, to repeal that provision in a sweeping anti-illegal immigration bill he signed last year.
Lieutenant Governor
Nuñez’s politics have leaned more moderate than DeSantis’ over the years, but she hasn’t been shy about using strong language to criticize political opponents.
Such was the case during the 2016 Presidential Primary, when she backed Rubio over Trump. In a since-deleted post to X, then called Twitter, she called the now-President-elect “the biggest con-man there is,” adding the hashtags “#supportsKKK” and “#nevertrump.”
She deleted the post after joining DeSantis’ 2018 campaign for Governor, canceling a bid for the Florida Senate.
As Lieutenant Governor, Nuñez has been tasked with managing the Florida Department of Health and chairing Space Florida and Florida’s Cybersecurity Task force. She’s also an active member of the Statewide Council on Human Trafficking, leading discussions on an issue about which she’s been vocally passionate.
Nuñez has supported a swimming lesson voucher program in Florida, in response to the state leading the nation in childhood drownings. This year, she backed DeSantis’ push against the Amendment 3 initiative to legalize recreational cannabis, accusing advocates of the efforts who said it was about freedom of being “high on their own supply” and arguing it would reward “corporate greed.”
In the 2022 election cycle, when DeSantis overwhelmingly won re-election, Nuñez was a dependable campaign surrogate, condemning then-Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried for comparing the Governor to Adolf Hitler and downplaying talk of there being a rift between Trump and DeSantis as “made-up animosity.”
When DeSantis ran for President last year, Nuñez endorsed him, describing him as a “great Governor and an even better man” who “does not waiver in the face of adversity.”
Other options
Nuñez has been mentioned as a potential DeSantis pick to replace Rubio, whom Trump has tapped to serve as Secretary of State, in the U.S. Senate. Proponents of choosing Nuñez for the post note that among other things, it would keep the seat in the hands of a member of South Florida’s Cuban diaspora.
She has also been discussed as one of the likelier candidates for Governor in 2026 if DeSantis opts to serve out the remainder of his term. Other names in the 2026 mix include First Lady Casey DeSantis, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, Attorney General Ashley Moody, Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson, former U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz and Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis, who is resigning to run for Congress.
In 2023, Nuñez was among those rumored to be weighing a run for Miami-Dade Mayor. She never filed for the race that year. But she did secure an OK from state lawmakers to relocate her main office to the county.
