Shocking slurs hurled as GOP primary for Florida governor gets ugly
U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds speaking with attendees at the 2022 Student Action Summit at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida. (Photo credit: Gage Skidmore)
January 12, 2026
The battle to win the Republican Party nomination to replace the termed-out Gov. Ron DeSantis on the November ballot took an uglier turn as hedge fund CEO James Fishback ramped up his racist attacks on primary frontrunner Rep. Byron Donalds (R).
Donalds, a longtime defender and ally of Donald Trump, holds a commanding lead over Fishback, who is running as an outsider, with the Florida Phoenix reporting the GOP lawmaker holds an overwhelming 76 percent to 6 percent gap among voters with Trump’s endorsement factored in.
That hasn’t kept Fishback from trying to gain notice and make waves with a campaign that appears centered on appealing to the racist faction within the MAGA base.
Responding to an X post that compared photos of Fishback and his partner with Donalds with his wife, Ericka, with whom he has three children, the hedge fund CEO intentionally misspelled the GOP lawmaker’s name and accused him of wanting to turn the state into a “ghetto.”
“By’rone wants to turn Florida into a Section 8 ghetto,” he wrote on X.
The 31-year-old Fishbacks' latest racist smear comes weeks after he accused his primary opponent of being a “SLAVE who was auctioned off for $31 million” to business interests.
According to MS NOW columnist Ja'han Jones, “Fishback doubled and tripled down on his racist slur, telling Florida Politics that Donalds 'has no right to complain' and shouldn’t be offended by the slur because, Fishback said, the representative’s ancestors weren’t enslaved in the United States.”
You can see Fishback’s latest attack here.