Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL), the frontrunner in the race to become Florida’s next governor, attacked the Democratic frontrunner repeatedly for his support of some trans rights.
Arguing that Democratic frontrunner and former Rep. David Jolly isn’t “a cultural fit for our state,” Donalds said on a recent podcast, “David Jolly is somebody who believes it’s still okay for boys to play in girls’ sports. He thinks it’s okay to allow for gender reassignment surgery for minors. I mean, that’s, that’s crazy. Transgendering the kids? Nobody believes that, nobody with common sense.”
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While Florida is holding its primary election today, Donalds is by far the favorite to win the GOP nod. He was endorsed by the president earlier this year, and polling shows that he has nearly 50% support in a crowded field.
And he’ll likely face Jolly, a former Republican congressmember who switched parties in 2022 to support Andrew Yang’s centrist “Forward Party” and then run as a Democrat this year.
Donalds has a long history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights, getting a three and then a zero out of 100 on HRC’s Congressional Scorecard for the past two sessions of Congress, going so far as to vote against marriage equality in 2022.
Now, Donalds is running for governor as the current Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, is term-limited. And he’s following DeSantis’ path by making LGBTQ+ issues central to his platform to attract right-wing support.
Donalds brought up his anti-trans accusations at a rally in Sarasota yesterday, with similar phrasing, showing that the well-rehearsed attack lines will likely continue in the general election.
“David Jolly is somebody who believes it’s okay for boys to be in girls’ sports,” Donalds said at the rally. “It’s just him and the WNBA now who thinks this. This is just crazy. Everybody already knows that makes no sense.”
And at another recent rally in an unspecified city, reported by Advocate, Donalds repeated the WNBA line and also added a jab at Jolly’s support for trans people’s medical freedom.
“David Jolly still thinks it’s okay to transgender kids. This is sick to me,” he said. “Even the American Medical Association has finally realized that this is insanity. That you do not take the puberty from kids. You protect their puberty. Even European countries have realized this now, and they’ve stopped this practice. But David Jolly and the radical Democrat socialists-they still support it.”
Donalds’ ads also focus on trans rights. One of the ads not only shows a picture of Pennsylvania college swimmer Lia Thomas, who is transgender, it also has part of a speech where Jolly says, “If a local community wants to paint a mural for the LGBTQ+ community, I’ll buy you a can of paint.” The color saturation is low and ominous music plays, showing that Donalds thinks that is bad.
Jolly, though, isn’t the solid supporter of trans people’s rights that Donalds makes him out to be. He said in an interview earlier this month, “I don’t think we should have biologically born men playing in competitive sports,” but added that he doesn’t think that the state government should be getting involved “if a 10- or 12-year-old soccer league in the community has a coed team.”
And when it comes to gender-affirming care for trans youth, his position is that the government shouldn’t be getting involved in what is a decision to be made by families and medical professionals, which is not the same as support for “transgendering kids.” His “parents’ rights” position was enough to get him the endorsement of Equality Florida Action PAC.
Donalds is incorrect when talking about the American Medical Association, which, like all major professional medical bodies in the US, supports gender-affirming care for trans youth. And European countries, being multiple countries, have different positions on gender-affirming care, with large European countries like France and Germany supporting it.
But, as DeSantis has shown, there is an appetite for this kind of rhetoric in Florida, and it could be Donalds’ path to victory in November.
Florida’s primary elections are being held today.
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