{"id":231269,"date":"2026-04-14T14:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T14:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/231269\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T14:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T14:11:10","slug":"no-john-morgan-is-not-running-for-florida-governor-but-he-has-a-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/231269\/","title":{"rendered":"No, John Morgan is not running for Florida governor, but he has a plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Is the face seen on billboards all over Florida running for governor? No, he won’t be one of the nearly four dozen candidates<\/a> in the race, but he does want you to name his new third political party<\/a> for a $100,000 prize.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>. He finally shut that down in a video post on April 13.<\/p>\n

“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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

Morgan, founder of the nationwide personal injury firm Morgan & Morgan<\/a>, was instrumental in campaigns to legalize medical marijuana, which succeeded in 2016<\/a>, and to incrementally raise the state’s minimum wage to $15<\/a>, which passed in 2020. He has been less successful<\/a> in legalizing recreational marijuana<\/a> in Florida, but he called his efforts for the constitutional amendments “more impactful than anything any governor has ever done.”<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

John Morgan offers $100,000 for a third-party name<\/p>\n

“I do believe this: that most of us agree on most things,” Morgan said. “I\u2019ve found that with my amendments, if you take the D down and the R down, we agree on most things together.<\/p>\n

“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.<\/p>\n

“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.”<\/p>\n

\"Orlando<\/p>\n

Orlando attorney John Morgan appears on billboards across Florida such as this one in DeLand March 23, 2026.<\/p>\n

Morgan has called for a third party for years<\/p>\n

A third party has long been on Morgan’s mind. In January 2024,\u00a0he told Politico<\/a>\u00a0that if he ran for governor, he’d do it under a new party. He\u00a0called for one again<\/a>\u00a0six months later, after former President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race and former Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in.<\/p>\n

Last February, Morgan announced he was forming a new political party<\/a> “for those of us stuck in the middle.”<\/p>\n

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<\/a> he didn’t vote for Harris or Trump. However, he said at the time, “I\u2019m pulling like hell for Trump.”<\/p>\n

What is John Morgan’s new political party?<\/p>\n

In Morgan’s Politico interview, he said his proposed new party would be called the \u201cCapitalist Party.\u201d<\/p>\n

“Both parties have things I like,” he said in a\u00a0social media post about it<\/a>. “But what I don\u2019t like is that everything is a bloodsport. It\u2019s all or nothing. Compromise is a dirty word and civility has been abandoned. The last time America was together was right after 9\/11.<\/p>\n

“And I liked that feel. Just like the greatest generation in WW2. People \u2026 we are all on the same f—ing team.”<\/p>\n

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.”\u00a0He cited<\/a>\u00a0marijuana, minimum wage, felons’ rights, and fair districts as examples and said that most laws passed today “benefit insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and other monopolies.<\/p>\n

“How about some laws for the people?”<\/p>\n

C. A. Bridges is a journalist for the USA TODAY Network-Florida’s service journalism Connect team. You can get all of Florida\u2019s best content directly in your inbox each weekday day by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(This story was updated to meet our standards.)<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: John Morgan offering $100,000 for name for his new Florida party<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is the face seen on billboards all over Florida running for governor? No, he won’t be one of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":231270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[103564,28,3291,30,29,43812,10498,102298,21249,412],"class_list":{"0":"post-231269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-constitutional-amendments","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-governor","11":"tag-florida-headlines","12":"tag-florida-news","13":"tag-john-morgan","14":"tag-medical-marijuana","15":"tag-morgan-morgan","16":"tag-recreational-marijuana","17":"tag-ron-desantis"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}