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As Tea Party candidates racked up electoral victories, Mr. Donalds mounted his first campaign for Congress in 2012 — and lost. But he made an impression, said Neil G. Volz, a political activist who met Mr. Donalds at a candidate forum that year.
"You just could see the political skills that he had right out the gate," he said. In 2016, Mr. Donalds won a seat in the Florida Legislature. He would go on to support a ballot measure in 2018 that would restore many felons' voting rights, a campaign that Mr. Volz helped lead.
That year, Mr. Donalds went on cable news to defend Mr. DeSantis, then the Republican nominee for governor, after he was accused of using a racist dog whistle against his Democratic opponent, Andrew Gillum, who was Black.
His relationship with Mr. DeSantis fractured five years later.
As the 2024 presidential election approached, Florida Republicans were divided over whether to support Mr. Trump, whose re-election seemed uncertain, or Mr. DeSantis, who became a conservative darling during the coronavirus pandemic.
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Byron Donalds' endorsement of Donald J. Trump over his governor, Ron
DeSantis, for president in 2023 paid off hugely.
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
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Mr. Donalds's prominence had risen after he was elected to Congress in 2020 and became a go-to guest on conservative news shows. In 2023, he objected to the DeSantis administration's proposed rewrite of Black history standards for middle school, which said enslaved people "developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."
Mr. Donalds endorsed Mr. Trump. Mr. DeSantis responded by saying that Mr. Donalds had not played much of a role in the state's conservative policy triumphs.
Mr. Donalds has continued to publicly praise Mr. DeSantis as the "best governor in the country." But the president's endorsement of Mr. Donalds for governor effectively denied Mr. DeSantis the power to name a political heir.
Last year, the governor weighed whether his wife, Casey, should run to succeed him. He also appointed an ally, Jay Collins, as lieutenant governor, but then declined to back him — or anyone else — for governor.
But Mr. Donalds, who raised more than $100 million over the course of the campaign, looked unbeatable.
Mike Durante, 76, a pastor who attended a Donalds rally at a veterans' hall in Naples last week, said the choice was simple.