Paul Renner, the former Florida House Speaker, has launched a bid for governor.
Published on September 14, 2025 at 4:25 pm
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Former House Speaker Paul Renner, who speaks to Duval County Republicans on Monday evening, is likely to appear on the August 2026 ballot for governor.
Area voters know him already. A longtime Jacksonville lawyer, he lost a primary for a House seat on the Westside by two votes last decade. Undeterred, he relocated to Palm Coast, where he ran and won, and then ascended to leadership in the Legislature.
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After he was termed-out in 2022, speculation swirled about his next political move.
Now he’s making it.
And it’s the biggest challenge of his career.
He doesn’t have the most buzz: U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds of Naples is endorsed by Donald Trump and buoyed by his political machine and advantaged by earned media on Fox and Newsmax.
In other words, many of the same tailwinds that took former St. Johns County Congressman Ron DeSantis from obscurity to inevitability are behind Donalds, the New York transplant who seeks to lead his adopted state.
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Speaking of DeSantis, indications are that the First Lady will pass on the race, leaving Lt. Gov. Jay Collins of Tampa as the standard bearer.
Collins, a former Green Beret, is still a work in progress as a candidate, given to occasional malapropisms like “Florida is the shining city on a hill.”
The Florida Senate, in which he served before being appointed to his new role, trains people to give rambling, scenery-chewing speeches, and much of what Collins says takes five minutes to make 30 seconds of actual points.
That said, the DeSantis appointee – called the “Chuck Norris of Florida politics” – is benefiting from earned media rarely granted to obscure LGs, including a trip to California to extradite an undocumented immigrant who is accused of an illegal u-turn that killed three on the Florida Turnpike. More recently, the governor’s official X account featured a campaign-style video showcasing Collins.
To put that in perspective, former Lt. Govs. Jeanette Nunez, Carlos Lopez-Cantera, and Jennifer Carroll never got that kind of taxpayer-funded showcase.
So there’s a Trump lane established and a DeSantis lane under construction.
And then there’s Paul Renner on the frontage road.
But he believes he can make progress over time.
“I’m not going to get in the middle of this endorsement versus that endorsement. I’m just going to go earn the trust of voters,” Renner told me upon launching his campaign.
Ultimately, he’s betting on at least a third of voters being sick of the ongoing Trump-DeSantis frenemy dynamic, which may be a longshot.
But it’s the one he’s taking.
“It looks like there may be a looming civil war, and I’m going to put Florida first. That’s going to be my approach. I think the race will look very different a year from now than it does today,” he told the Florida Phoenix last week.
He also isn’t put off by Donalds’ fundraising advantage (more than $25 million raised thus far), saying “we’ll have enough to compete … [and] take our message to the voters.”
Thus far, Renner has faced some resistance, including at a taxpayer-funded press conference where DeSantis fragged Renner, who was a reliable ally of his in Tallahassee.
“Governor of what?” DeSantis quipped when asked by media about Renner’s decision to enter the race. (DeSantis called the move “ill-advised.”)
DeSantis has broken with other governors by openly discussing retail politics when speaking at state events, and if Renner continues to make progress, that will continue.
Can Renner win as the underdog?
That is an open question.
Rick Scott emerged from obscurity to topple Bill McCollum a decade and a half ago.
But he had big money.
DeSantis did the same, but he spent months lobbying Trump to back him over seemingly inevitable Adam Putnam before he launched.
Meanwhile, the race won’t be decided in the Republican primary alone.
David Jolly, yet another Republican-turned-Democrat from the Tampa area, is on the Charlie Crist highway. And right now he’s the prohibitive front runner with no serious competition.
While that could change with someone like Al Lawson, Jr. or even local Angie Nixon entering the race, the assumption has to be that an active candidate has the advantage over a speculative one until further notice.
What we do know is Renner’s show-up tells us Florida politics is quickly heading into the 2026 cycle.
