Byron Donalds thinks there’s a ‘pretty good’ chance Ron DeSantis backs him for Governor

U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds is actively running for Governor, and he says there’s a “pretty good” chance the current Governor will endorse him sooner or later.

“A lot depends on what’s going to happen over the next couple of months,” the Naples Republican said on Fox News Sunday.

Donalds said he’s been “at the tip of the spear” in battles against the left, “so I think that my track record in the Republican conservative movement is something that lines up with Governor Ron DeSantis.”

But with First Lady Casey DeSantis mulling a run, Donalds says her husband “has his own decisions to make.”

The intrigue continues about whether the First Lady actually runs; as Erika Donalds says, she has “teased” a campaign. And at least one poll released this month says she would start in a decent position against the Donald Trump-endorsed Donalds.

A Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy survey shows 53% of GOP voters in the state like Casey DeSantis, while only 9% do not. In the same poll, Donalds had 48% approval and 6% disapproval. That gives DeSantis a leg up in terms of favorability.

However, another recent poll from the Trump-aligned Fabrizio Lee & Associates showed Byron Donalds leading Casey DeSantis 34% to 30% in a head-to-head matchup among Republican Primary voters.

The First Lady is cryptic about her intentions during interviews with friendly questioners.

She sidestepped a direct question at the National Review Institute’s “Idea Summit,” extolling her husband as “the GOAT” and offering vague criticisms of other politicians she wouldn’t name as part of a “long-winded answer” that ended with “we’ll see.”

“All that (Gov. DeSantis) has done is extremely fragile. You could get somebody in, and it could revert back,” she said.

She also condemned politicians who “think about what’s next on the next political rung in their career.”

“The founders never thought that politics should ever have been a career, right? You were supposed to go up and serve, and you come home, and you live under the laws that you pass. But it’s really changed,” said the wife of a man who ran for Senate while in Congress and then ran for President immediately after being elected Governor a second time.

Her coyness about her political future started in earnest back in February.

“To quote the late Yogi Berra,” the First Lady said when asked if she was running, “if you see a fork in the road, take it.”

She also warned about “squishes wanting to go Republican lite by continuing to spend on massive boondoggles and not implementing the will of the people,” in comments vague enough to conceivably apply to Donalds, especially given what the Governor said about him directly.

“You got a guy like Byron Donalds; he just hasn’t been a part of any of the victories that we’ve had here over the left over these last years. He’s just not been a part of it,” Gov. DeSantis said in Tampa.

“He’s been in other states campaigning, doing that, and that’s fine. But OK, well, then deliver results up there. You know, that’s what I want to see. I want to see them delivering results for the people of Florida. We deliver it here all the time for the people of Florida, and that’s what we need to be doing.”