Gov. Ron DeSantis appeared at a Florida GOP leadership forum on Tuesday alongside Rep. Byron Donalds (FL-19), the party’s gubernatorial nominee, and Attorney General James Uthmeier, who is running for a full term after DeSantis appointed him in early 2025.
Uthmeier succeeded Ashley Moody, whom DeSantis had earlier appointed to fill the Senate seat vacated by Marco Rubio when Rubio was tapped as Trump’s Secretary of State.
At the forum, DeSantis formally endorsed Donalds and the rest of the statewide ticket, telling attendees that keeping the current course was essential to the state’s continued growth after he leaves office.
He used the speech to lay out what he described as eight years of fiscal restraint and party growth in Florida.
“We have 4 million more residents than New York State does, yet our budget’s $117 billion, their budget’s $268 BILLION dollars!”
“We have the lowest per capita tax in the country, we’ve paid off just since I’ve been governor, 52% of our state’s debt, and we have a smaller government today than the day I took office. See, it can be done!”
DeSantis also pointed to changes in the state’s voter rolls, saying one million current Florida Republicans were registered Democrats or had no party affiliation on the day he first won office in 2018, as people moved to the state seeking what he called a “refuge of sanity in a world gone mad.”
He noted that despite winning with only a 300,000-voter Republican registration advantage in 2022, he still posted the largest gubernatorial victory margin in state history, saying, “we win and they lose.”
Heckler Interruption
Partway through the speech, a heckler attempted to interrupt DeSantis. The governor responded by accusing the heckler of being paid by Democratic donor George Soros.
“Hey, Soros isn’t paying you enough, because you’re not very good at this! You should try again,” DeSantis said. “He needs to pay some better talent instead of having people like you show up. This ain’t my first rodeo, lady! I’ve seen it all, and you ain’t very good at it.”
DeSantis is in his final term as governor under Florida’s term-limit rules.
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