Florida voters elected Republican Rep. Byron Donalds governor Tuesday and approved a constitutional amendment that more than triples the homestead property tax exemption for homeowners, giving Republicans their clearest wins on a night of heavy losses elsewhere.
Donalds won about 50.1 percent of the vote and beat Democrat David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who switched parties in 2025, by a little more than a point. He will be the first Black governor of Florida and succeeds Gov. Ron DeSantis in January.
“As your next governor, we are going to make sure that Florida remains the very best state in all of America,” Donalds told supporters at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Hollywood. “We are going to drive down costs for the people of this state.”
Amendment 3
Amendment 3 passed with 62 percent of the vote, clearing the 60 percent required for constitutional amendments in Florida. With nearly all of the expected vote counted early Wednesday, the tally stood at 4,917,482 for and 3,015,840 against.
The measure raises the homestead exemption from $50,000 to $150,000 next year and to $250,000 in 2028. The exemption does not apply to school district taxes. The amendment also lowers the cap on yearly assessment increases for commercial property and second homes, and it delays full use of the exemption for new Florida residents.
DeSantis pushed the measure starting in 2025 and credited it with holding Florida together for Republicans. “The existence of Amendment 3 on the ballot is one of the reasons Florida averted the fate of other red states,” he wrote on X. “It drew more voters to the polls.”
He also noted that the amendment “did fairly well with the voters in Broward, one of our most liberal counties.”
The rest of the ticket
Attorney General James Uthmeier, a DeSantis appointee, also won election. “James has done a great job and Florida is fortunate to have him for the next four years,” DeSantis wrote, calling Uthmeier’s opponent someone who “wanted to eliminate cash bail” and release dangerous criminals.
DeSantis pointed out what Florida’s result means after the losses in Texas, Ohio and Georgia. Florida, he wrote, will be the only one of the 10 most populous states with a Republican governor.
What critics say
Local governments warned during the campaign that the tax cut would force budget cuts. The city of Miami prepared a 25 percent cut covering police, fire, parks and other services, according to the commercial real estate news site Bisnow, and some tax advisers said landlords could pass higher commercial taxes on to renters.
The bottom line
On a night when Republicans lost governorships in Texas, Ohio and Georgia, Florida voters gave the party a working model. DeSantis put a specific, popular tax cut on the ballot, and it ran almost 12 points ahead of the winning candidate for governor. Six in 10 voters, including a good share in liberal Broward County, said they wanted to keep more of what they earn on their own homes.
Miami’s threat to cut police and fire service is the familiar response of governments that would rather scare residents than trim administrative spending. City halls have other places to look before they cut first responders, and they can live within a smaller budget the way families do.
Donalds ran on lowering costs, and he now has the voters’ mandate to carry out the amendment fully. Republicans elsewhere should study what happened in Florida and put cost-of-living relief that voters can see at the top of their agenda for 2028.