Poll shows Joe Gruters as overwhelming GOP favorite over Blaise Ingoglia for Chief Financial Officer

No kratom for kids, says Joe Gruters.

In a prospective GOP Primary for Chief Financial Officer, Sen. Joe Gruters would crush Sen. Blaise Ingoglia — if voters are informed President Donald Trump endorses the Sarasota Republican.

That’s the finding of the latest survey by St. Pete Polls commissioned by Florida Politics.

The poll of likely Republican Primary voters in Florida found Gruters the favorite of almost 60% of respondents. Pollsters informed voters of the President’s endorsement.

By comparison, just over 10% prefer Ingoglia. Another 30% remain undecided, but also a non-factor as Gruters clears majority support.

Pollsters surveyed 763 voters from Friday through Sunday, and reported a 3.5% margin of error in results. Three-quarters of respondents were reached on the phone, with the remainder responding by text.

In some ways, that’s unsurprising. Gruters, a Sarasota Republican, filed for the statewide office back in June 2024, and already had Trump’s support at the time.

Those around Gruters quickly pointed to the poll results as a sign of political strength.

“The power of the Trump endorsement is a real thing,” said Max Goodman, a long-tome political adviser to Gruters. “As this poll clearly conveys, there is no escaping the fact that a race between one of Trump’s most loyal supporters and a gentleman who actively opposed Trump in his presidential primaries is really not a race at all.”

But the race became more complicated when former Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis left the office early for an ultimately successful run for Congress. That has left the Cabinet post vacant for months.

Gov. Ron DeSantis gets to choose Gruters’ replacement for the office, and is widely expected to pick Ingoglia, a Spring Hill Republican and close ally in the Legislature. The GOP Governor is expected to name a new CFO soon, possibly this week.

Should Ingoglia get the job, he is expected to run for the office in 2026, when Gruters plans to run regardless. Certainly, incumbency has its advantages, and Ingoglia will be able to raise his profile while holding office.

But it’s unlikely Trump will shift his support. Gruters ran the Florida arm of Trump’s campaign in 2016 and led the Republican Party of Florida when Trump won the state in 2020, even as other swing states broke for Democrat Joe Biden.

Ingoglia, like Gruters, also ran the state GOP for four years himself, including in 2018 when DeSantis won the election as Governor. More recently, Ingoglia lobbied fellow Republicans in the Senate to endorse DeSantis’ bid for President last year, while Gruters was the first state lawmaker to endorse Trump’s campaign to return to the White House.