Byron Donalds vows to revive property tax cuts as Governor if November amendment fails

The leading Republican candidate for Governor says he won’t take no for an answer when it comes to a constitutional amendment lowering property taxes for homeowners’ primary residences.

“If it doesn’t pass this November, we’re going to bring it back as the state’s next Governor,” said U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds on Friday’s Varney & Co.

The Naples Republican, who qualified for the race this week with President Donald Trump‘s endorsement, is already pointing to a dormant constitutional body as his backstop.

HJR 1-F, the measure headed to the November ballot, would raise the homestead exemption on non-school levies to $150,000 next year and $250,000 in 2028. Should it fall short of the 60% threshold, Donalds says he’ll reach for a mechanism buried in state government to force the issue.

“We’re going to use our tax and budget commission, which is in Florida’s Constitution, to study all taxes and fees with the goal of eliminating homestead property taxes or at a minimum, of providing real relief to seniors on fixed income and working families in our state,” the candidate told Varney’s Fox Business viewers.

The Florida Taxation and Budget Reform Commission (TBRC) is scheduled to convene next January for the first time in two decades, soon after the next Governor is sworn in. It could advance an amendment for the 2028 ballot.

In issuing caution ahead of the Special Session, the fiscal watchdog group Florida TaxWatch said the TBRC would be the appropriate forum to weigh changes such as those voters will contemplate in November.

During the same segment, Donalds threw Gov. Ron DeSantis support amid attacks on the proposed amendment from the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, which panned the plan as a “poorly designed” step toward a “progressive property tax regime” and likened it to the agenda of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Journal’s opinion page sits inside the Murdoch media empire — the same orbit as the Fox Business network that aired Donalds’ rebuttal. The amendment also drew a court challenge this week from critics hoping to knock it off the ballot.

“What the Journal did not talk about is that property taxes in the state of Florida have doubled over the last decade. Our seniors on fixed income, they’re still on fixed income. Our working families, they’re trying to make ends meet. Local governments in our state have watched those property taxes double, and they did little to stop it. So the Governor is taking the right approach in this, but at the end of the day this is gonna be in the hands of the voters of Florida. The Legislature can’t make changes, they propose that for the ballot. The voters of Florida will decide this November.”