Second-term Florida Congressman Byron Donalds doesn’t boast many legislative accomplishments, but that hasn’t kept the Black conservative from being nominated as House Speaker and being rumored as a possible Trump vice presidential pick during the campaign.
Donalds vigorously campaigned with Trump and helped him reach and win Black voters, but he didn’t land either position. So far, he hasn’t been named to any position in the second Trump administration.
But the neglect hasn’t dimmed his ardor or diminished his role as one of Trump’s most supportive media surrogates, as he showed during his Sunday appearance on ABC’s “This Week.” Donalds also has supported Trump’s false claims of a rigged 2020 election and says Joe Biden has not been a “legitimate” president.
Here’s a look at Donalds’ views, his comments on race, and the business he and his wife run, which give the couple financial benefits that flow from his policy positions.
Background
Donalds is a hard-right conservative who was raised by a single mom in Brooklyn, struggled in life and faced legal problems as a college student for marijuana possession and check fraud. Divorced from his first wife in 2002, he met Erika Lees, who introduced him to evangelical Christianity and married him in 2003.
He is one of more than 300,000 to receive political training at 45-year-old The Leadership Institute, which is hailed as “the premier practical training ground where conservative leaders are made,” including Rep. Jim Jordan and anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.
Now, he is a leader of Florida’s Tea Party and earns top ratings from key conservative and Christian groups, including:
- 100% ratings from Florida Right to Life, National Right to Life Committee, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum, the Koch brothers’ Americans for Prosperity, and groups aligned with Focus on the Family: Family Research Council Action and Florida Family Action
- 99% rating from Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee
- 96% rating from Heritage Action for America
- 94% rating from the John Birch Society
His congressional bio portrays him as “a firebrand for the conservative movement, freedom and liberty” and “a rising star in the Republican Party” who “has stood in the trenches against the rise of woke culture in schools, corporate America, the financial services industry and our military.” He has called himself a “Trump-supporting, gun-owning, liberty-loving, pro-life, politically incorrect Black man.”
Donalds says he’s part of the Freedom Force, which battles socialism in America. He’s also a regular guest on Family Research Council podcasts (see here, here, here and here).
While serving in the Florida House of Representatives from 2016 to 2020, he co-sponsored bills supporting gay conversion therapy and opposing medical treatments for transgender minors and discrimination protections for LGBTQ workers. None passed.
U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds introduces Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at a roundtable discussion with community members on October 18, 2024, in Auburn Hills, Michigan. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
Racial views
Donalds’ views on race have earned him support from many whites and enmity from some Blacks. He’s the only Black person to join the House’s far-right Freedom Caucus but has been blocked from joining the Congressional Black Caucus.
His comments and votes also have raised questions about his racial views. In June, Donalds joined 191 Republican House members in voting to reinstall a Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery after it was removed in 2023.
One of his most controversial claims came during a Trump campaign stop in Philadelphia where he complained government programs designed to aid Blacks actually hurt them. He contrasted the conditions of Blacks today to an earlier time, saying: “You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively.”
“You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together.”
During the Jim Crow period, laws and customs were used to oppress Blacks and keep them from voting. Criticisms of Donalds’ comments came immediately, with the Biden campaign joining in, but Donalds did what he often does: denied he made the comments and claimed others were “lying” and “gaslighting” about him.
“Donalds does not believe that systemic racism exists,” said The New Republic in a profile. “He believes that laissez-faire capitalism will allow minorities to succeed, and that the best thing the government can do for Black people is get the hell out of their way.”
Donalds also backed Trump’s claim to a group of Black journalists that “all of a sudden” Democrat Kamala Harris “happened to turn Black” after previously identifying as Indian. Donalds defended Trump’s claim in a testy exchange with “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos.
Christian domination
Donalds believes Christians should rule over nonbelievers, a stance he and his wife, Erika, promoted at a February 2021 event hosted by health-and-wealth preacher Andrew Wommack’s political group, Truth and Liberty Coalition, held at New Hope Ministries in Naples, Fla.
Erika Donalds told the group Christians should “rise up as the most powerful voting bloc and political force in the entire world.”
Donalds is an education “warrior” who gave a primetime speech on “School Choice” during July’s Republican National Convention. “Donald Trump believes every parent deserves a choice, and every child deserves a chance,” he said.
Donalds enthusiastically supports the idea that students should be able to use tax dollars to pay for private Christian schooling and receive “a biblical worldview education.”
Erika, a school privatization activist, operates both for-profit and nonprofit private school ventures, including a network of charter schools, that allow the couple to profit financially when Florida citizens make such choices. Their partnership combines “advocacy and income,” reported The New York Times: “As Mr. Donalds pushed legislation expanding access to charter schools and voucher programs, Mrs. Donalds began to build a company and a nonprofit that took advantage of that expansion.”
In 2015, Erika Donalds founded a partisan activist group called Florida Coalition of School Board Members with local Tea Party supporters and Bridget Ziegler, who went on to help found Moms for Liberty, the group that has demanded book bans in school libraries nationwide. Erika Donalds serves as an advisory board member for both Moms for Liberty and the Heritage Foundation, architect of Project 2025.
During his years in the Florida House of Representatives, Donalds championed legislation that:
- Helped expand Florida’s voucher program by $200 million, taking money from public school budgets and giving it to private Christian schools through student vouchers, which added to the couple’s income from their private schools
- Streamlined approval for charter schools while skimping on oversight of curriculum or educational quality through a program called “schools of hope”
- Allows any community member to object to any part of the public school curriculum, a law that opened the door to a flurry of book bans.