BLAC Magazine · August 2026
I did a double take.
That’s probably the most honest place to start.
A Black man from Crown Heights, raised by a single mother, just won the Republican nomination for governor of Florida. Donald Trump endorsed him. And if Byron Donalds wins in November, he will become the first Black governor in Florida’s history.
The Democrat standing in his way is a white man who was a Republican member of Congress ten years ago.
Just sit with that for a minute.
Because whatever else this election is, it is not the version of the story most of us were taught to expect.
And I caught myself doing something.
My first thought was: Why is he a Republican?
Then I had another thought.
Why did I think that needed explaining?
I would probably push back if somebody suggested there was a particular way Black people were supposed to vote. Yet somewhere in my own head was the assumption that a Black Republican required an explanation in a way a Black Democrat did not.
That bothered me a little.
Not because the question is wrong. A lot of people are asking it.
But sometimes the more interesting question is why something feels strange to us in the first place.
We were not always Democrats
Here is the part we tend to forget.
Black people were Republicans.
For generations after emancipation, overwhelmingly so. It was Lincoln’s party, yes, but more practically, it was the party willing to recognize Black citizenship and political participation when much of the country would not.
That changed.
Not overnight. Not because of one election. And certainly not because every Black person suddenly became ideologically liberal.
The movement toward the Democratic Party stretched from Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal through the civil rights era. Economics mattered. Labor mattered. Migration mattered. But civil rights became the defining break.
And that distinction matters when we talk about someone like Byron Donalds.
Because Black political alignment has never been as simple as Black ideology.
There have always been Black conservatives.
Go to church.
Go to a family reunion.
Talk about taxes. Business. Marriage. Crime. Education. Abortion. Government.
You will find plenty of Black people whose views don’t fit neatly into what somebody looking at election returns might assume Black people believe.
My family has them.
The interesting part is that most Black conservatives still vote Democratic.
They compartmentalize.
So maybe the unusual thing about Byron Donalds isn’t that he holds conservative beliefs.
Maybe it is that he stopped compartmentalizing.
In 2010, after the financial crash, Donalds changed his registration from Democrat to Republican and found his political home in the Tea Party movement.
He made the switch most Black conservatives don’t.
The argument he is actually making
This is where I think we have to be careful.
It would be easy to turn Donalds into a caricature.
Black guy. Republican. Trump supporter.
Done.
Except that doesn’t tell us very much.
Donalds has an argument about Black America, and whether we agree with it or not, we should at least deal with the argument he is actually making.
His basic contention is that Black voters have given one political party an extraordinary share of their votes for generations without receiving enough in return.
He argues that government social policy weakened Black families. That school choice matters more than protecting a school system that isn’t working for a child. That ownership and access to capital matter. That family formation matters. That Black voters would have more political leverage if neither party could assume their support.
There are serious arguments against all of that.
There is evidence against parts of it.
But it is still an argument.
And there are Black people who believe some version of it who aren’t running for anything, aren’t being paid by anybody and aren’t trying to get on television.
We should be able to acknowledge that.
Then there is Philadelphia.
Jim Crow
In June 2024, Donalds was speaking at a Trump campaign event aimed at Black voters when he said that during Jim Crow, “the Black family was together.”
That went exactly about how you would expect it to go.
Hakeem Jeffries, another Black man from Brooklyn, went to the House floor and started talking about what Jim Crow actually meant for Black people, including Emmett Till.
Joy Reid pointed out that Donalds’ own interracial marriage would have been illegal in parts of the country during the era he was invoking.
Donalds didn’t back away.
His response was that he wasn’t saying Black people were better off under Jim Crow. He was talking about Black family structure.
And I think that exchange tells us something important.
Not because I think Donalds secretly longs for segregation. I don’t.
But because his defense has remained focused on what he meant, while much of the outrage was about the history he chose to use to make the point.
Those aren’t quite the same argument.
And maybe that explains why people seemed to be talking past each other.
Donalds was making an argument about family.
His critics heard him using one of the most violent periods in Black American history as evidence for it.
You can decide for yourself whether that distinction makes his comments better.
But I don’t think we understand Donalds if we pretend the moment was simply a gaffe.
It wasn’t.
It sits right in the middle of what he believes about Black America.
We have seen pieces of this before
Byron Donalds isn’t the first Black Republican to make Black voters wrestle with this.
Tim Scott.
Winsome Earle-Sears.
Mia Love.
Herschel Walker.
And generally, Black voters have answered the question pretty clearly.
Looking like us has not been enough.
Black voters have repeatedly shown that racial identity does not automatically override political alignment.
I’ve always thought that said something important about Black voters.
We aren’t simply voting for our reflection.
But Florida may be about to test that idea in a slightly different way.
Because this is Florida
The office matters.
Governor isn’t one seat out of 100.
The governor runs the executive branch of the third-largest state in America. Budgets. Appointments. Vetoes. Agencies. Education policy. Criminal justice. Economic development.
Things that touch people’s lives.
Then there is the history.
This is Florida.
Rosewood.
Ocoee.
Groveland.
A state with a long and sometimes brutal history involving Black citizenship, voting and power.
It is also a state that has spent the last several years arguing about how that history should be taught in its schools.
So yes, electing the first Black governor of Florida would mean something.
I don’t think we need to pretend it wouldn’t just because that governor might be a Republican.
History would still be history.
But then comes the other part.
David Jolly
The Democrat isn’t exactly the person you would design in a laboratory to make this choice easier.
David Jolly used to be a Republican.
He served in Congress as a Republican. He left the party during Donald Trump’s first term and eventually became a Democrat.
Now he’s the Democratic nominee for governor.
So imagine the ballot from the perspective of a Black Floridian who generally votes Democratic.
On one side is a Black Republican whose positions on education, immigration, guns, government and Donald Trump may be far from yours.
On the other is a white Democrat who was a Republican congressman a decade ago and may now be closer to you on many of those same policies.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that sits history.
Florida has never had a Black governor.
Not once.
So what is representation worth?
That’s the question I keep coming back to.
Not: Should Black people vote for Byron Donalds?
That’s not my question to answer for you.
And not: Should Black people vote for David Jolly?
I’m not answering that one either.
The question is more uncomfortable than either of those.
What do we actually mean when we say representation matters?
Because we say it all the time.
Representation matters.
Black leadership matters.
Being able to see yourself in positions of power matters.
And I believe all of those things.
But what happens when the person who looks like you doesn’t govern like you?
What happens when the person whose policies are closer to yours doesn’t share the history you wanted to see represented in that office?
Which one is representation?
Maybe both.
Maybe neither.
Maybe that is the point.
For a long time, Black political representation and Black political interests have overlapped enough that we haven’t always had to separate the two.
Florida may be about to make us do it.
One choice could produce the first Black governor in the history of a state that once worked very hard to keep Black people away from political power.
The other could put someone in that office whose policies many Black voters believe better represent their interests.
The face in the office.
Or what the person in that office does with the power.
Those aren’t the same thing.
Maybe they never were.
Whatever Black Floridians decide in November, I think this election gives us an opportunity to be more precise when we talk about representation.
Because saying it matters is easy.
The harder question is what, exactly, we believe it is worth.
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