TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The race is over. The question mark is not.
Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins (R) says he is focused on finishing his current job and helping reunite Republicans following a bruising primary for governor. What comes after January, however, remains undecided.
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Collins finished second to U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL19) in the Republican primary, receiving about 25% of the vote compared with Donalds’ nearly 48%. Collins carried 17 counties, most of them across North Florida, giving him a regional political footprint despite the decisive statewide loss.
“Byron and I have spoken. We’re good,” Collins said in an interview following the primary.
Donalds, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, will face Democratic nominee David Jolly in the Nov. 3 general election. The winner will succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis.
The truce comes after a contentious Republican contest in which Collins and Donalds traded attacks over their records and conservative credentials.
“I think this was a pretty nasty primary,” Collins said. “There was a lot of misinformation, a lot of bad polling and a lot of things that I think we should learn from as a party. But this is what happens in elections. You’ve got to come together.”
Collins said he hopes Donalds succeeds and argued that Republicans must put their primary differences aside to defeat Jolly.
The lieutenant governor is not entirely abandoning his case about how the primary unfolded. Collins said consolidating the field around his campaign could have produced “a different outcome,” but added that candidates must own their decisions and move forward.
DeSantis appointed Collins as Florida’s lieutenant governor in August 2025, filling the vacancy left by Jeanette Nuñez. At the time, DeSantis called the Army Special Forces veteran “the Chuck Norris of Florida politics.”
Collins had served in the Florida Senate since 2022 and emerged as a reliable ally of the governor. He sponsored the 2023 law allowing eligible Floridians to carry concealed weapons without a state permit and later championed legislation expanding required public-school instruction on the history of communism.
Collins entered the governor’s race promising to preserve the DeSantis administration’s conservative agenda. DeSantis, however, stopped short of endorsing Collins or any other candidate in the primary.
Collins now says he will spend the administration’s closing months traveling the state, working with communities and making the lieutenant governor’s office more visible.
He is not announcing another campaign, but he is not closing the door on politics either. Another bid for office and a return to the private sector are both possibilities.
“Do I think I’ll stay in politics? Maybe,” Collins said. “Maybe it’s time to go back to the private sector. I’ve always said I don’t have to be a politician. I don’t have to be in politics to be a leader.”
For now, the immediate future for Florida’s number two is making his current post a number one priority. What comes after that is the one contest Collins is not ready to call.
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