{"id":35788,"date":"2025-11-06T13:10:12","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T13:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/35788\/"},"modified":"2025-11-06T13:10:12","modified_gmt":"2025-11-06T13:10:12","slug":"orange-county-mayor-jerry-demings-enters-florida-governors-race-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/35788\/","title":{"rendered":"Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings enters Florida governor’s race"},"content":{"rendered":"

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Democratic Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings formally announced on Thursday that he will run for Florida governor, joining a crowded field of contenders from both sides of the aisle hoping to succeed term-limited Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Demings, who leads the county that is home to Orlando and its multiple theme park resorts, filed papers to run for Florida’s highest office on Friday, according to state elections records.<\/p>\n

The former Orange County sheriff learned the ins-and-outs of a statewide race in Florida three years ago when his wife, former U.S. Rep. Val Demings<\/a>, unsuccessfully ran as the Democratic nominee for a U.S. Senate seat against Republican Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n

If successful, Demings would be the first African American governor of the third most populous U.S. state, though not the first Black gubernatorial nominee on a Florida Democratic ticket. Former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum<\/a> lost to DeSantis in 2018 by one of the narrowest margins in Florida history.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Demings campaign didn’t immediately respond to an emailed inquiry on Monday.<\/p>\n

Demings leads a county that has become one of the last Democratic holdouts in a state that has becoming increasingly Republican since DeSantis moved into the Governor’s Mansion in 2019. Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris won almost 56% of the vote in Orange County, compared to Republican Donald Trump’s 56.1% of the vote in Florida.<\/p>\n

Besides Demings, 28 other candidates have filed to run for Florida governor, though most are considered long-shots.<\/p>\n

Those considered serious contenders include David Jolly, a former Republican congressman<\/a> who left the party during Trump\u2019s first term and is running as a Democrat; Republican U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, who has been endorsed by Trump; and Republican former House speaker Paul Renner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. \u2014 Democratic Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings formally announced on Thursday that he will run…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[2811,28,30,29,6281,8134,1335,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-35788","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-election","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-florida-headlines","11":"tag-florida-news","12":"tag-governor","13":"tag-jerry-demings","14":"tag-orange-county","15":"tag-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35788","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=35788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}