Bloomberg Opinion columnist Mary Ellen Klas has issued a pointed critique of Florida's Republican Party, arguing that its candidates — led by gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds — offer little substance as they campaign across a state the party once dominated.

In a column, Klas, the former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, pointed to Donalds' appearance at Florida A&M University (FAMU), a historically Black university in Tallahassee, as emblematic of what she described as a cadre of lazy Florida candidates representing what was once the state's proud and vigorous party. The column lands in the closing stretch of the race to succeed term-limited Governor Ron DeSantis — an open-seat contest whose winner will inherit the state's affordability pressures along with the policy levers over insurance, housing and healthcare that come with the governor's office.

"Florida's Republican Party — very much including its gubernatorial nominee — is a weak collection of stale rhetoric, failed ideas and vague plans," she wrote.

The exchange Klas highlights began when a FAMU student noted that Florida ranks 42nd in the nation on affordability and asked what Donalds planned to do to improve things. The candidate, she wrote, droned on about the high price of property insurance, housing and healthcare, "but he offered no real fixes" beyond deregulation.

"Less regulation might help, but only if accompanied by industry reforms that prevent parent companies from siphoning off profits so their affiliates can justify higher premiums — details Donalds ignored," Klas wrote.

By contrast, Donalds' Democratic opponent has proposed state-backed housing assistance, greater access to healthcare and a state-backed property insurance fund to lower the state's sky-high insurance costs. The Democrat also supports new taxes on insurance industry profits and caps on the profits of investor-owned utility companies. Taken together, the proposals amount to a far larger direct role for state government in housing, healthcare, insurance and utilities — the cost categories behind the 42nd-place affordability ranking raised in the FAMU exchange. Donalds has dismissed the agenda as "government-run socialism" while, Klas noted, taking money from the industries that would feel the bite of those policies.

"That's the mindset that kept Governor Ron DeSantis and the Republican-controlled legislature from doing anything to prepare the state's aging labor pool for a tech-torn future or addressing the growing number of uninsured Floridians crowding hospital emergency rooms," Klas wrote. "They preferred to wage culture wars over gender identity, education policy and academic speech, distracting voters from their government grift — like DeSantis awarding contracts to donors to build the ill-considered and ill-fated 'Alligator Alcatraz' immigrant detention center in the Everglades."

Donalds, she argued, "has made clear that he's going to continue the governor's 'small-minded, transactional politics.'" It's why his $111 million campaign has received seven-figure donations from a casino mogul, a school-choice billionaire, a private prison operator, an electric monopoly, and a hedge fund manager. The roster cuts across gaming, education, corrections, utilities and finance — industries with regular business before the statehouse, from utility rates to prison contracts.

Republicans remain the favorites in Florida, a state President Donald Trump won by 13 points in 2024. But Klas noted that most voters in Florida are unhappy with the president's performance and "have signaled they are restless with Republicans." Even Donalds scrubbed Trump's name from his website, instead laboring to tie himself to local Republicans.

"[But] Donalds has repeatedly defended Trump's Iran war, tariffs and handling of immigration," Klas wrote, concluding: "If enough voters give Donalds the same kind of scrutiny he received at FAMU, he won't be Florida's next governor."