U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds hasn’t even gotten his party’s nomination to run for Governor yet, but people keep asking him if he wants to lead the nation.
Dealing with the question again this week, the Naples Republican told a crowd at a campaign event that he wasn’t planning to go back to Washington.
“Right now, I’m focused on being Governor of Florida. I don’t believe in planning politics. I never have. I think you worry about the thing in front of you, and you do that job,” Donalds said in Hardee County.
“To be honest, I really don’t have any interest in going back to Washington, D.C. Been there long enough. I’m ready to come home. And this state is home to me.”
He handled the question differently earlier this month on on “HotCakes & Hot Takes.”
“Politics is a timing business. If the timing works out for you, you do it. If the timing is not in your favor, you should have enough awareness and situational awareness and self-awareness, and hopefully you’ve got people around you who will say, ‘No, you should not do this. It’s not your time or it’s not going to work out.’ So I don’t think about that stuff. I think about what I’m doing today,” he added.
As we wrote before, Donalds does not plan to follow the leads of Reubin Askew, Jeb Bush, Ron DeSantis or Bob Graham. All of them ran for President, with incumbent DeSantis actually doing so months after he was sworn in for a second term.
Polymarket continues to give Donalds a 0.8% chance of winning the GOP nomination in two years.
