By Gray Rohrer, The News Service of Florida <\/p>\n
U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds\u2019 campaign raised $14 million in the last two months, easily outpacing his Republican and Democratic rivals in the race to replace term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis.<\/p>\n
Between his campaign account and political committee, Donalds has $65.8 million cash on hand as of June 1, according to campaign finance reports tracking fundraising from April 1 to May 31.<\/p>\n
Qualifying for the governor\u2019s race is set to end at noon Friday, and Donalds\u2019 opponents are lagging him in fundraising. But GOP rival Lt. Gov. Jay Collins pulled in a $5 million contribution to give his campaign a boost.<\/p>\n
Propel Florida LLC, a group formed to combat Big Tech firms, made the $5 million donation. In all, Collins has nearly $6 million in his campaign account and political committee combined as of June 1.<\/p>\n
Former House Speaker Paul Renner, a Palm Coast Republican, raised $105,000 in the last two months in his campaign and political committee, and has nearly $3.2 million cash on hand.<\/p>\n
Conservative activist James Fishback raised about $450,000 in the reporting period but has spent most of it, and has $112,000 cash on hand as of June 1. His campaign finance report shows nearly $1,600 in expenses May 27-29 at the Dolphin Resort in Lake Buena Vista. Social media posts show he spent his honeymoon at nearby Disney World at that time after getting married.<\/p>\n
For Democratic field, it was largely cleared when Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings announced earlier this month he\u2019s dropping his gubernatorial campaign after being diagnosed with prostate cancer.<\/p>\n
That leaves former U.S. Rep. David Jolly as the only major Democratic candidate.<\/p>\n
Jolly raised $1.2 million in April and May but has spent much of the $6 million he\u2019s raised in the campaign so far, leaving him with $2 million cash on hand entering June.<\/p>\n
When Demings made his announcement stepping out of the race, Jolly and Donalds each expressed well wishes to him and his family, then pivoted to the general election.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the announcement of Jerry Demings dropping out of the Democrat primary for Governor, the general election starts today,\u201d Donalds posted on X.<\/p>\n
Jolly on Wednesday named former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham as his running mate, an announcement typically reserved for after the primary.<\/p>\n
Donalds leads in most reputable polls but could need to spend some of his war chest to contend with his GOP primary opponents.<\/p>\n
The primary election is Aug. 18, and the general election is Nov. 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Gray Rohrer, The News Service of Florida U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds\u2019 campaign raised $14 million in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":96270,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[232,234,233],"class_list":["post-307351","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307351","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=307351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/96270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}