By: Mitch Perry, The Florida Phoenix
Trailing badly in the race for the GOP nomination for governor, Lt. Gov. Jay Collins unloaded on U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds Monday, claiming he has been found “wanting” in his decision-making, performance in office, and moral clarity.
Speaking at a St. Petersburg brewing company just days after he took to social media to deny he was about to end his campaign, Collins distributed a 13-page report on Donalds’ alleged “liabilities” to reporters, and told a crowd of supporters that he’d debated with himself whether to go nuclear on the front-runner for the GOP nomination, but said the choice ultimately was clear.
“I wish this race was simply about the issues. I wish we can have a straight-forward conversation about policy and the future of this state. But there is too much at stake to ignore the reality of what’s in front of us,” Collins said.
“Because this race isn’t just about who can win the primary, who has the most money, or the most endorsements; it’s about who can win the general election,” he continued.
“These issues get talked about now or they get talked about in October, where we cannot risk this state falling and having [David] Jolly as our next governor,” he said, adding, “this is not a risk that we can afford to take here in Florida.”
Donalds has dominated the Republican contest for governor since he entered it last year, thanks in part to the endorsement he received from President Donald Trump before he got into the race.
Recent polls dating to February show him up anywhere between 25 and 42 points over Collins, former House Speaker Paul Renner, and investment firm CEO James Fishback. And the $67 million he has raised to date for his campaign dwarfs the combined fundraising totals of all of the other major candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties running to succeed Ron DeSantis in the governor’s mansion.
However, a survey of 1,834 Florida voters conducted by two Democratic consulting firms last week showed Jolly in a statistical dead-heat with Donalds.
The Donalds campaign brushed off Collins’ comments Monday.
“President Trump’s endorsed candidate Byron Donalds will be Florida’s next governor because he is the proven conservative fighter who can unite our party and make Florida safer and more affordable,” said Ryan Smith, chief strategist for the Donalds campaign. “Byron Donalds will defeat the Democrats and every desperate losing candidate doing their dirty work.”
While Republicans running against Donalds claim he has yet to be seriously vetted by the media, Collins’ document cites stories about him that have all been reported by established news organizations but never collected in one report.
Selling cannabis
The document references Donalds’ arrest record, which he has previously acknowledged.
However, it was only last month that he allowed for the first time in an interview with CBS Miami that not only had he possessed marijuana as a teenager, but that he had sold weed as a youth. That admission came after he had claimed on several different occasions that he had never sold cannabis.
Collins’ report lists what has previously been reported: that Donalds was arrested in 2000 at age 21 on a second-degree felony charge of bribery, to which he pleaded no contest. He was later sentenced to two years on probation, and a court later expunged his record.
“Byron Donalds sold drugs to people, to children,” Collins said Monday. “And now he believes he’s fit to be the governor of the state of Florida. “
Stock trades
Donalds has said he supports legislation opposing congressional stock trading, but Collins argues in his dossier that the congressman failed to file the proper disclosure for more than 100 stock trades totaling as much as $1.6 million.
That prompted the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center to file a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics in September 2024, urging it to investigate his actions.
Collins said Monday that this stock trading “coincides” with an increase in Donalds’ net worth, although by how much is uncertain. Donalds’ first financial disclosure form when he entered Congress in 2021 reported between $69,044 and $984,998. His most recent financial disclosure form filed in August lists his net worth as somewhere between $1.6 million and $7 million. (Federal lawmakers are required only to indicate approximate ranges of value of their assets).
Charter Schools
Collins pivoted to “the issue of taxpayer dollars,” referring to a charter school tied to Donalds’ wife, Erika Donalds, who has been prominent in Florida over the past decade in the school-choice movement.
CBS News reported in December about the Optima Classical Academy in Fort Myers, founded by Erika Donalds in 2023. The story reported that tax filings indicated Optima spent approximately 30% of its government funding — about $35 million — on outside firms with ties to Ms. Donalds.
“The school in Fort Myers, it never opened,” Collins said. “You should talk to the families. Never opened, despite Donalds misleading parents for several years.”
The report references Donalds’ association with Larry Wilcoxson, a former senior adviser who was charged but never convicted of three counts of child molestation in 2006.
Collins’ press conference took place just four days after he took to X to insist “there is zero percent chance I am suspending my campaign,” adding “that is in fact a 100 percent b——- rumor.”
Collins’ campaign for governor hasn’t panned out as he likely intended it to.
After keeping the position of lieutenant governor open for seven months, DeSantis’ appointment of Collins to succeed Jeanette Nuñez in August seemed an indication that the man he dubbed “the Chuck Norris” of Florida politics would be his hand-picked successor.
That hasn’t happened, however, and may never at this point.
“I was handpicked by Gov. DeSantis to be his lieutenant governor,” Collins said when asked about that non-endorsement on Monday. “When he put me in this position, he said Jay was Day One ready. If something were to happen to him, I could step up and lead this state right now,” he said, adding, “I have the governor’s back, and I know he has mine.”
Collins began the news conference by saying that despite the speculation that surfaced last week, he was not suspending his campaign, and in fact was about to launch a seven figure statewide media buy “to tell our story.”
Following the news conference, Jolly weighed in with a written statement.
“We are building a coalition of Democrats, independents, and Republicans, ready to change the direction of Florida. My Republican friends are having a hard family conversation right now, and I welcome the November contest against whomever they choose to nominate.”
When all you have left is to sling Mud, you're done.