Is the face seen on billboards all over Florida running for governor? No, he won’t be one of the nearly four dozen candidates in the race, but he does want you to name his new third political party for a $100,000 prize.
Rumors of Orlando attorney John Morgan running for Florida governor to replace outgoing, term-limited Ron DeSantis have swirled ever since he teased the idea in 2024. He finally shut that down in a video post on April 13.
“For about the last year and a half, a lot of people have been asking me to run for governor of the State of Florida. It’s really quite an honor,” he posted on X. However, he said he decided that his work on promoting constitutional amendments for medical marijuana and a $15 minimum wage satisfied his urges for political change.
“Most things that happen in Tallahassee benefit the top 1% or the top 0.01%. Everything I did with the amendments was to benefit you, the people,” he said. “So I won’t be running for governor.”
Morgan, founder of the nationwide personal injury firm Morgan & Morgan, was instrumental in campaigns to legalize medical marijuana, which succeeded in 2016, and to incrementally raise the state’s minimum wage to $15, which passed in 2020. He has been less successful in legalizing recreational marijuana in Florida, but he called his efforts for the constitutional amendments “more impactful than anything any governor has ever done.”
“I also started thinking about the job itself,” he added. “I’m not the kind of guy that can campaign door-to-door or go to Wawas or Buc-ee’s and cut yellow ribbons for, y’know, grand openings.
“And then I started thinking about hurricanes and, y’know, I like to go to bed with a gummy, and I wouldn’t be able to take my gummies during hurricane season,” Morgan said. “So I didn’t like that, either.”
John Morgan offers $100,000 for a third-party name
“I do believe this: that most of us agree on most things,” Morgan said. “I’ve found that with my amendments, if you take the D down and the R down, we agree on most things together.
“I believe that what’s missing in Florida and across the country is a third party,” he said, adding he’ll be filing the paperwork for a new third party and awarding a cash prize for the best name.
“I’m going to have a contest for you all to name it. I’m going to pay the winner $100,000,” he said. Details of the contest were not immediately provided, but Morgan said he would be filing his already completed paperwork for the party “in the coming days.”
Orlando attorney John Morgan appears on billboards across Florida such as this one in DeLand March 23, 2026.
Morgan has called for a third party for years
A third party has long been on Morgan’s mind. In January 2024, he told Politico that if he ran for governor, he’d do it under a new party. He called for one again six months later, after former President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and former Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in.
Last February, Morgan announced he was forming a new political party “for those of us stuck in the middle.”
Morgan is registered in Florida as having No Party Affiliation after switching from Democrat in 2020, records show. He has long been a major Democratic Party donor, but said in a 2025 social media post he didn’t vote for Harris or Trump. However, he said at the time, “I’m pulling like hell for Trump.”
What is John Morgan’s new political party?
In Morgan’s Politico interview, he said his proposed new party would be called the “Capitalist Party.”
“Both parties have things I like,” he said in a social media post about it. “But what I don’t like is that everything is a bloodsport. It’s all or nothing. Compromise is a dirty word and civility has been abandoned. The last time America was together was right after 9/11.
“And I liked that feel. Just like the greatest generation in WW2. People … we are all on the same f—ing team.”
Morgan said he learned from the 2025 recreational marijuana amendment attempt that when an issue isn’t associated with a party, “most of us agree on most things.” He cited marijuana, minimum wage, felons’ rights, and fair districts as examples and said that most laws passed today “benefit insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and other monopolies.
“How about some laws for the people?”
C. A. Bridges is a journalist for the USA TODAY Network-Florida’s service journalism Connect team. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday day by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY.
(This story was updated to meet our standards.)
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: John Morgan offering $100,000 for name for his new Florida party