Progressive Democrats might all be holding their noses voting for David Jolly (who didn’t quit the Republican Party until 2018 and waited until last year to put another capital D on his name), but the fact is that the stench coming from the governor’s Cabinet is putrid. Up and down the ticket, Florida deserves new blood.
Read more: Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s full 2026 voting guide
The official Republican candidate, U.S. Congressman Byron Donalds, is basically a walking puppet parroting whatever the president and Gov. Ron DeSantis say. Laughably, he’s also painted Jolly, who became a Democrat just a year ago, as a radical socialist.
What’s not funny, however, is the Donalds family’s ties to the charter school grift taking hold in Florida right now.
Less than a year ago, Donalds’ wife Erika, a joyful warrior in the Moms For Liberty world, found herself at the center of an investigation into the Optima school in Fort Myers, which she founded. The school, and others like it, had been touted by school-choice advocates as an alternative to public education. The charter schools receive public funding, but are not subject to the same scrutiny as traditional public schools.
CBS News, however, pointed out that “after enrolling hundreds of students and hiring teachers, the Fort Myers school failed to open, leaving parents scrambling to find a school for their children.”
What’s more is that in summer 2025, the Florida Bulldog looked at Byron Donalds’ disclosures and found “he had failed to fully report his wife’s stakes in companies that provide services to a charter school chain she co-founded.”
“Optima Foundation, which Erika Donalds launched in 2017 and renamed the Education Freedom Foundation this past March, and its affiliated charter schools paid more than $10 million to two for-profit companies belonging to the congressman’s wife,” the Bulldog reported last year.
A new Miami Herald-Tampa Bay Times analysis of tax filings and state audits found that over the last four years, five charter schools funded by state money have paid more than $30 million to two private companies run by Erika Donalds.
“Once the taxpayer money lands in the coffers of Donalds’ businesses, how it’s used and how much executives are paid is not publicly reported,” the report added. “If he wins, for the first time, Florida could have a leader whose family wealth is tied to the flow of taxpayer funds to the private charter school management industry. That means, as governor, decisions he makes about public education funding could have a direct impact on his family’s bottom line.”
That kind of cronyism is all over the Republican ticket when it comes to statewide races.
Creative Loafing voting guide 2026: Florida Attorney General
Florida’s Attorney General James Uthmeier is an unelected incumbent, appointed by DeSantis, who unleashed the 38-year-old on every “woke” cause that remotely chapped his ass.
“He fights the culture war against gays, Blacks, Hispanics, liberals, Muslims, women, immigrants, professors and unions on a daily basis as if these people are the enemy and not fellow Floridians,” our friends at La Gaceta wrote about Uthmeier, adding that, “He lacks the moral compass to hold his job.”
We could not agree more. Immigrants, the LGBTQ+ community, and felons who’ve done their time and paid their fines are not the enemy, but Uthmeier treats them as such.
Just last week, Florida’s Republican Party was forced to drop a lawsuit against TV stations airing ads that pointed out Uthmeier’s role in the $10 million Hope Florida scandal that re-directed funds that could’ve been used for kids healthcare and instead used them on political initiatives favored by the governor.
Uthmeier’s opponent, Jose Javier “J.J.” Rodriguez, offers quite a contrast. The 48-year-old served as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor under President Biden, has promised to enforce minimum wage law, and in a past life represented labor unions. He’s even served in the Peace Corps.
La Gaceta added that the Florida Attorney General race is, “a choice between good and evil.”
The same could be said for the contests to become Florida’s next Chief Financial Officer and Commissioner of Agriculture.
Creative Loafing voting guide 2026: Florida Chief Financial Officer
Hernando’s Blaise Ingoglia was appointed CFO by the governor and has since kept his mouth shut as bad decisions by DeSantis and Uthmeier cost Floridians millions (hello Alligator Alcatraz and the many lawsuits levied against the state). What’s more is that as Ingoglia went on tour after purportedly DOGE-ing local governments, the Bulldog reported that he also “omitted from his public financial disclosure more than a hundred properties tied to him through his companies.”
Ingoglia’s opponent, former state Sen. Annette Taddeo, wants answers, and we should send her to Tallahassee to have a look.
Creative Loafing voting guide 2026: Florida Commissioner of Agriculture
And then there’s Wilton Simpson, Florida’s lowly Commissioner of Agriculture who goes along with whatever Ron DeSantis asks him to, from a vote that almost handed hundreds of acres of Florida forest to golf course developers to another vote that pretty much gave 22 acres of Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus away to the Tampa Bay Rays.
Simpson’s opponent, Democrat Joey Mendoza Atkins, has a background helping migrant farm workers and Dreamers. That alone is a breath of fresh air.
It’s time to flip Tallahassee upside down.
Creative Loafing Tampa Bay accepts letters to the editors and op-ed pitches. We will not run your letter without permission. Email your submissions to rroa@cltampa.com for consideration.
This article appears in Oct. 22 – 28, 2026.
