OPINION:
“This election cycle is about one thing: Common sense versus crazy.”
That might sound like hyperbolic political rhetoric, but what Rep. Byron Donalds said Wednesday, speaking at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, was, regrettably, not much of an exaggeration.
It succinctly summarizes what is at stake in November regarding control of Congress, as well as in downballot races such as his own nationwide.
Mr. Donalds, a Florida Republican seeking to succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis as governor of the Sunshine State, warned the assembled multitude at the American Airlines Center against entrusting control of Congress to Democrats.
“Do you let the arsonist become the firefighter?” the three-term lawmaker, 47, asked rhetorically, ridiculing Democrats’ claims of fighting for affordability on behalf of consumers.
“My opponent back in Florida … this guy wants you to believe that he’s some kind of reasonable, independent voice,” Mr. Donalds said of former Rep. David Jolly, his opponent, a former Republican congressman now running as a Democrat. “But don’t be fooled. He is a career Washington lobbyist who has completely surrendered to radical socialism.”
He added: “Florida cannot afford David Jolly, and America cannot afford the Democrat Party.”
Mr. Donalds characterized his opponent as an anti-Second Amendment extremist and charged that his challenger “defends irreversible gender procedures for minors.”
In many ways, the 2026 Florida gubernatorial race is shaping up as a replay of the 2022 contest, in which another former Republican, Charlie Crist, ran as a liberal Democrat in a bid to return to the governor’s office he had left more than a decade earlier.
In 2016, by then already a Democrat, Mr. Crist was elected to the first of three terms in Congress. He defeated Mr. Jolly, who became a Democrat in April 2025. It would be understandable, however, if Mr. Jolly shunned comparisons to Mr. Crist, given that Mr. DeSantis defeated Crist in a 2022 landslide with 59.4% of the vote.
No Democrat has been elected Florida governor since 1994, and in the increasingly red state, Mr. Jolly seems unlikely to snap that losing streak — especially when fellow Democratic nominee Angie Nixon, running for U.S. Senate from Florida, is an avowed democratic socialist.
After Ms. Nixon won the party’s Senate nod on Aug. 18, Mr. Jolly was asked whether the two of them would ever campaign together. Perhaps understandably, he sidestepped the question.
Yet the same day Mr. Donalds was addressing the Republican gathering in Dallas, far-left Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, New York Democrat, was seeking to lend her star power to Ms. Nixon’s underdog candidacy in Kissimmee, Florida.
What Mr. Donalds said about his Democratic gubernatorial opponent could just as easily apply to any number of other Democrats running for office across the country.
We suspect the Florida Republican’s rising star would be included on a list of “crazies” running for high office — along with, as a Democrat, James Talarico, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Texas.
Mr. Talarico is backpedaling as fast and furiously as he can from his far-left views and votes as a state lawmaker in Austin, particularly on transgender issues. In a Fox News interview Sept. 8, he said he now favors a ban on gender surgery for minors and opposes trans-identifying biological males competing in females’ sports “if it endangers safety and fairness.”
Yet that is a loophole big enough for an illegal immigrant with an improperly issued commercial driver’s license to drive an 18-wheeler through: Who gets to decide when “safety and fairness” are endangered and what criteria are used to make that call?
Is there anyone who really believes that Mr. Talarico would not instantly revert to radical form on that and other left-wing positions he is now disavowing once safely ensconced in Texas’ Senate seat for six years?
As with the Florida governorship, Texas has not elected a Democrat statewide since 1994 — a streak that extends further back for individual offices: to 1990 for the governorship and to 1988 for the U.S. Senate.
“Florida and Texas have something absolutely essential in common,” Mr. Donalds told Republican conventioneers in Dallas. “Our two states prove every single day that Republican policies built on common sense work for the American people.”
Common sense beats crazy every time. Or at least, it should.
• Peter Parisi is a former editor with The Washington Times.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.