The Education of Byron Donalds, the Right-Wing Fringe’s Newest Star

Why the two-term congressman, who rose to prominence amid the House speakership fight, is the future of Florida Republicans

This article appears in full at The New Republic

I first encountered Florida Representative Byron Donalds in a small conference room at CPAC Dallas back in August 2022. He stood alongside his wife, Erika, who told an audience of perhaps 150 people the story of their middle child, Darin, who did not do well in traditional school but now thrives at a small private school able to give him the individualized attention he needs. “In the United States today, [school choice] is frankly only preserved for the rich and people in the upper middle class,” Byron Donalds commented.

The Donaldses’ policy prescription—get involved with your school board, promote school vouchers—fit with the themes of the conference. The social justice argument did not. The moment stuck with me even as much else about the frenetic three-day event faded from memory.

I next encountered Donalds midway through Kevin McCarthy’s interminable January struggle to coax and bribe his way into enough votes to become the GOP’s new House speaker, when Texas Representative and anti-McCarthyite Chip Roy unexpectedly nominated Donalds as the holdouts’ preferred speaker candidate. “For the first time in history,” Roy proclaimed, “there have been two Black Americans placed into the nomination for speaker of the House.” Donalds got 20 votes during that roll call.

Roy’s line earned a reluctant standing ovation inside the chamber and vitriol outside it. “Byron Donalds is not a historic candidate for speaker. He is a prop,” Democratic Representative Cori Bush tweeted furiously. “Despite being Black, he supports a policy agenda intent on upholding and perpetuating white supremacy.” A few days later, MSNBC anchor Joy Reid wrote off the Donalds nomination as a “diversity statement.”

After extensive negotiations, Donalds eventually ended the saga and, along with most of the other objectors, voted for McCarthy. The move paid off. This no-name Florida member of the House with just one term under his belt landed himself a plum position on the House Republican Steering Committee, which determines who gets assigned to all the other committees. Donalds’s star is rising, and his ability to meld the staunch conservative politics of the anti-McCarthy faction with a softer, almost progressive tone of rhetoric seems likely to take him even higher.

Read the rest at The New Republic