Article By Laura C. Morel
The Republican candidate for Florida governor is bucking the trend opposing these facilities.
Throughout his campaign for Florida governor, Rep. Byron Donalds has been unapologetically enthusiastic about data centers. The Republican candidate vying to replace Gov. Ron DeSantis told a group of Miami businesses last spring that Florida was “wide open” for development. “We have actual land in our state that is still pristine, available to use,” he said at the time. Amid growing evidence of the unpopularity of data centers among voters, he nonetheless dug in, bashing other candidates, like David Jolly, now the Democratic nominee, who had proposed moratoriums. “There ain’t no bans coming,” Donalds said at a campaign event in August. “But it sounds good on TV. Or it sounds good on social media.”
His wife, Erika Donalds, a charter school executive and education chair for the conservative think tank, America First Policy Institute, is also a supporter of the technology. At a Washington, DC, meeting with educators last month, she said that teachers are often the biggest obstacle to implementing AI in schools. During a roundtable discussion at the Ronald Reagan Institute, she made the case that AI education models could be more effective than some current teaching methods. “The biggest challenge I see with adopting these new technologies and the desire to ban them, ” she said, according to the Miami Herald, “is great teachers who have been teaching the same way for a long time and getting great results, and who have to change their pedagogy if we adopt these technologies.”
The couple also include the burgeoning AI industry in their stock portfolio. According to Byron Donalds’ most recent Congressional financial disclosure report, which was released in August and includes financial information for 2025, he and his wife own up to $390,000 in stocks connected to a myriad of companies involved with the development of data centers, including tech giants like Microsoft and Amazon. Other investments include contractors that specialize in data center construction and materials, such as Monolithic Power Systems, which is headquartered in Florida.
The 2025 disclosure report also notes that Erika Donalds earned income from X Corp., owned by tech trillionaire Elon Musk, who endorsed her husband in November. The specific amount of her income is unknown, because she is not required to report it. Erika Donalds told the Tampa Bay Times last month that “X pays creators like her a share of ad revenue based on engagement with their content.” The content in question is unknown. There was no evidence that Musk himself, who has funneled millions into Republican campaigns in the midterms, has contributed to Donalds as well.
As with many investors, and according to the disclosure reports, their stocks are not managed by the individuals directly but by an investment firm—in this case, Moran Wealth Management, in Naples, Florida. So it’s likely that Donalds is not choosing the specific stocks to include in his portfolio. He said as much in July, when asked about his investments at a meeting with faith leaders in Doral, Florida Politics reported. “My broker does it on my behalf because I gave him that authority and that authorization when I opened up the accounts,” Donalds replied. “I don’t tell him what to trade or what not to trade because, quite frankly, it’s highly unethical. And I would never do that.” (His campaign did not respond to my multiple messages seeking comment.)
“A claim that an official is not involved in the day-to-day trading of their stocks does not in any way remove the conflict of interest or the ethical issues.”
Even if Donalds is not directly overseeing his portfolio, there still could be a potential for a conflict of interest if any of his decisions as a government official—and potentially Florida’s new governor—directly benefit some of the companies in which he’s invested, said Kedric Payne, vice president and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, a Washington DC, based nonpartisan group that focuses on democratic issues, including the ethical rules for elected officials. “A claim that an official is not involved in the day-to-day trading of their stocks does not in any way remove the conflict of interest or the ethical issues,” he told me. “Even if he is not involved in the trading, he would have the ability to influence the value of the stocks, possibly with his official duties.” One potential example could be if Donalds invests in a company that might have future plans to build data centers in Florida.
In 2024, the nonpartisan group filed a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics, reporting that Donalds had violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which requires lawmakers to report any stock trading within 45 days or otherwise face fines. He had failed to disclose up to $1.6 million in stock trades. The complaint’s outcome has not been made public, Payne said.
The financial disclosure reports are the most recent example of how connected Donalds has been with the AI industry. In Congress, he is a member of the Subcommittee on Digital Assets, Financial Technology, and Artificial Intelligence. After winning the Republican nomination in the governor’s race in August, he named Republican state senator from Miami-Dade county, Bryan Ávila, as his running mate. This year, Ávila filed a bill to create records exemptions, which would effectively shield developers’ plans from public scrutiny for up to a year. The measure ultimately failed, but his other proposal requiring data centers to cover their own utility costs passed and is now Florida law (Donalds filed a similar measure in Congress).
In July, Politico reported that tech companies had donated millions to Donalds’ campaign, a group that included four developers who were “actively pursuing or had previously proposed data centers in the Sunshine State.” But although these donations may bolster the GOP candidate’s considerable war chest— which now totals $125 million— they might also dissuade voters who oppose data centers from supporting him. Recent polling shows the race will be tight, with some polls finding Donalds ahead by a few points and others pointing to a toss up.
In August, I spoke to Floridians in Citrus and Sarasota counties where some of these proposals to build these centers had been filed. Everyone with whom I spoke told me they felt threatened by the expansion of data center development in their areas. Some voters, including Republicans, told me they would support the Democratic nominee, David Jolly, who has called for a moratorium on data centers. “Everything for this election, for me, is based on the data centers at this point,” one Citrus County resident told me, “and I think most everybody that you talk to, everybody on Facebook, everybody that we talk to on the street, it’s all about the data centers.”
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