TALLAHASSEE
Florida is entering its first open gubernatorial race in eight years, and the fight over property taxes already underway may end up defining whichever administration follows Ron DeSantis in Tallahassee.
DeSantis is barred from seeking a third consecutive term under Florida’s 1992 “Eight is Enough” constitutional amendment, which voters approved by 77% and which limits governors, along with other statewide and legislative offices, to two consecutive four-year terms. DeSantis, elected in 2018 and reelected in a landslide in 2022, will leave office in January 2027, one of 15 term-limited incumbent governors nationally sitting out the 2026 cycle.
The Republican primary held August 18 resolved what had briefly looked like a crowded, DeSantis-adjacent free-for-all. U.S. Representative Byron Donalds, endorsed early by President Trump and backed by Senator Rick Scott, won the GOP nomination after building a commanding fundraising and polling lead, reportedly topping $40 million raised earlier in the year. Donalds will face Democrat Kristen Jolly in the November 3 general election, in a state Republicans have not lost the governor’s office in since 1994.
The primary was not without drama inside DeSantis’s own political circle. Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins, whom DeSantis had appointed to the post the previous August, entered the race directly against the Trump-backed Donalds, framing his run around two decades of Green Beret service. Former House Speaker Paul Renner also entered, casting himself as the candidate to defend the “Free State of Florida” record DeSantis built. Notably, DeSantis himself withheld an endorsement throughout the primary and at one point suggested his wife, Casey DeSantis, would make a worthy governor, underscoring the tension between the outgoing governor and the Trump-backed frontrunner who ultimately won the nomination.
Whoever is sworn in next January inherits a state grappling with Amendment 3, the ballot measure that would raise Florida’s homestead property-tax exemption to $250,000 by 2028. The measure leads in early polling, but opposition has been mounting: a coalition including the Florida Engineering Society, the American Planning Association’s Florida chapter, and county road and fire-safety associations argue the individual homeowner savings would be outweighed by the collective revenue loss to local governments, which rely heavily on property taxes to fund roads, schools, and emergency services.
That tension sets up a defining early test for Florida’s next governor, regardless of party. A Governor Donalds, who has run as a continuation of the DeSantis-Trump conservative coalition, would likely face pressure from his own base to defend the exemption expansion despite local-government objections, while balancing the state’s broader fiscal picture, including federal disaster-relief obligations tied to recent incidents and a state budget office already managing the ripple effects of national tariff policy and elevated interest rates. A Governor Jolly, running as the Democratic nominee in a state Republicans have dominated for three decades, would face an uphill legislative battle in a GOP-controlled legislature even to moderate the amendment, let alone reverse course on it should it pass in November alongside her.
Either way, Florida’s next chief executive will start their term navigating a property-tax framework voters may have already locked in before the new governor takes the oath, a structural fiscal decision made by referendum rather than gubernatorial policy, but one the next administration will have to administer, defend, and fund for years to come.
This article was produced under The Navarro Report’s Human-Directed AI Journalism model: reporting directed, reviewed, and edited by a human journalist, with AI-assisted research and drafting.