A.G. Gancarski
Lt. Gov. Jay Collins still isn’t committed to running for a promotion next year.
The Tampa Republican may be the best hope of Republicans who don’t want U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds to be the next Governor. Yet Collins stopped short of saying he was running to succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis during a national TV interview, despite being asked if he was running.
“I get to work alongside America’s Governor, and he’s the GOAT. He is the best at what he does in these United States, and I am honored to serve alongside him as his Lieutenant Governor,” Collins said.
Collins made the comments to Greg Kelly of Newsmax. For those looking to see if there will ultimately be a competitive race for the 2026 Republican nomination, they offered no clarity.
“I am laser focused on serving Floridians, making sure we get this right and I go down as a good, to great, to amazing, whatever the case may be. Whatever those verbs are, those adjectives, nouns, adverbs, I want them to describe me as someone who did what mattered, someone who had deeds, not words, and lived up to the expectations put before you,” Collins continued.
“It’s kind of hard to live up to the ‘Chuck Norris of Florida politics,’ but I’m going to do all I can to make sure it happens.”
The Miami Herald posits that DeSantis has a “dilemma” about whether to endorse or not. His appointed second-in-command, who previously ran for Congress unsuccessfully before winning an election for Florida Senate, has played coy when asked what he will do, even as the Governor himself has gone on record saying Collins has “decisions” to make.
Long before the appointment was made official, Collins seemed eager to run if given the green light to do so.
“When you’re talking about jobs like this or opportunities like this, I owe our state, our people, my family, our community, that due diligence to look into it, to make sure that that’s something that’s good for my wife and kids … good for my local community, good for our state … good for Governor DeSantis and the people around us. And if all those things come into alignment, then it’s something you look at,” Collins said in May.
Yet three months later and with the LG appointment secured, the politician who depicts himself as a man of action appears to be mired in quicksand.
Part of the reason may be in the Governor’s Mansion.
First Lady Casey DeSantis continues to take her time amid ongoing speculation that she may enter the race, and both her husband and she have suggested there’s no rush to take a definite stance.
“Politics will take care of itself. I mean, we have a whole year before we even have a Primary, and so that’s a lifetime in politics,” the Governor said earlier this month.
Similarly, Casey DeSantis has suggested that people are “tired of politics” and said previously that it’s “more than a year from qualifying.”
Now, it’s less than a year until the August Primary.
Even though politics may be exhausting and ultimately resolving on its own, the people who make elections happen are lining up behind Donalds, who has raised nearly $23 million in his eponymous Friends of Byron Donalds political committee, and close to $2 million raised to his campaign account.
While some of that money is being spent already, the longer opposition waits to manifest, the steeper the climb will be, and the scarcer the resources.
Though there certainly is value to earned media, such as Collins’ widely publicized junket to California for photo ops around the extradition of Harjinder Singh, translating that into a campaign requires political machinery that thus far doesn’t appear to be prioritized by Collins or the man who appointed him to his current job.
