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The Tampa Tiger Bay Club had hoped to hold a forum this month between the two major party candidates for governor, Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly. After the Donalds campaign cited a scheduling conflict, aides offered his running mate, former Miami-Dade County state Sen. Bryan Avila, to speak in his stead.

That became a bit awkward on Friday when audience members asked Avila on several occasions whether he or Donalds disagreed at all with any of President Donald Trump’s policies, such as his mass deportations of undocumented immigrants that fellow Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Maria Salazar declared in a new campaign ad on Thursday had “gone too far.”

Speaking on behalf of Donalds, Avila seemed intent on not saying anything remotely controversial.

“We have to go back to the four years prior to the current administration,” he said when asked about Salazar’s ad by Alex Sink, elected chief financial officer in Florida 20 years ago but who narrowly lost a bid for governor sixteen years ago.

“We had around 10 million illegal immigrants come into the country, some of them through the Southwest border, some of them came through Canada,” Avila said

He continued his response for a few more minutes, but never answered Sink’s question, eliciting protests from a couple of members of the audience.

On two other occasions Avila drew the same question: Were there any Trump policies that he or Donalds disagreed with?

The first time Avila completely ignored the question, instead saying that the campaign was seeing “tremendous energy” and “momentum” and disputing any polls that showed anything otherwise. The second time he said, “We are definitely in disagreement with how the Fed has been handling our interest rates.”

Lost in that response, however, is that the Federal Reserve Board is structured as an independency government agency, and that Trump himself was angry this week after the central bank increased interest rates by a quarter point, from 3.75% to 4%, the first such interest rate hike in three years.

Donalds himself did appear to distance himself from the president earlier in the week when he said “he had concerns” regarding Trump’s proposed $5,000 dividend checks, announced during the midterm Republican Convention last week in Dallas. “I’m not sure how you’re going to be able to pay for that over the long term,” he said in a Fox News interview.

That response was much milder than the reaction from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who said last week, “If you are getting surplus revenue, you should cut people’s tax and return it to the people,” adding, “What I don’t think you want to do is borrow another trillion-and-a-half dollars and then try to flood that into the economy, because that will lead to more inflation.”

Trump endorsed Donalds for governor in February 2025, an endorsement the candidate has touted throughout his race to win the Republican primary election. Whether that Trump support will carry him to victory over Jolly in November is less certain.

The Jolly campaign on Friday again said that Donalds had “ducked” debating Jolly at the Tampa Tiger Bay Club in responding to a posting by Donalds on social media that he had accepted three gubernatorial debates to take place before the Nov. 3 election

“David Jolly has already accepted two debates, with Tampa Bay Tiger Bay and CBS Miami’s Jim DeFede,” said Mark Riddle, a senior adviser to the Jolly-Gwen Graham campaign. “Byron Donalds has ducked those two, plus countless debates with his fellow Republicans in the primary. It’s pretty clear he’s not acting in good faith. The two campaigns will work on a debate schedule that’s best for Floridians. We look forward to the debates.”

Donalds originally called for Jolly and himself to engage in three gubernatorial debates in July. Jolly responded at the time, “Get through your primary and we’ll talk.”

A member of the Tampa Tiger Bay Club told the Phoenix last week that in fact the Donalds campaign had originally agreed for Donalds to appear with Jolly, then called back to say they wanted him to appear separately.

That board member said the Donalds campaign called back a third time to say he would not be able to attend and was offering Avila to appear instead. A spokesperson close to the Donalds campaign denied that sequence of events, saying they had never scheduled Donalds to appear at the event.

Florida Phoenix is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.