Every few months, Bisa Hall gets a phone call about a young man she met in college.
He was tall and handsome. He liked to party, and he could command a Florida A&M common room. He’d chosen a school a thousand miles from home on purpose but still called his mother. It was 1996, and the students fell in love in that early undergrad way when you’re trying to figure yourself and someone else out simultaneously.
When she was barely 21, Hall married him. By then, she said, their romantic flame had burned out. But she needed Florida residency to continue her studies affordably, and marriage was the solution. They wore sweatpants to the courthouse. Despite being broken up, they stayed married on paper for more than three years, then divorced.
But marriage and divorce records stay public, and Hall didn’t marry just anyone. She married the man who is now U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, the Republican front-runner to become the next governor of Florida.
The calls she gets today are from reporters, political operatives and private investigators. They ask her about their time living together. About Donalds’ marijuana arrest. About a later felony arrest, which Donalds says came after a young woman offered him $1,000 to use his debit card. The woman intended to overdraw the account. Donalds said yes.
Hall can’t help but laugh when the callers ask if she still has any paperwork related to Donalds’ charges. Even if Donalds had shown political promise 25 years ago — and he didn’t — would you keep your ex’s criminal records for a quarter century?
Whether Hall likes it or not, the phone is going to keep ringing. Her ex-husband is one of the most prominent Black voices in the Republican Party. At a time when Black voters overwhelmingly choose Democrats, Donalds has President Donald Trump’s endorsement to be Florida’s next governor.
If Donalds is successful, the man who now represents Collier and Lee counties in Congress could become the first Black conservative governor in U.S. history.
In an interview with the Times, Donalds described the moments that set him on his current path. His second arrest was his nadir, he said. It was also pivotal. Soon after, he found God and motivation.
“Everybody’s flawed. Everybody has frailties,” Donalds said. “A relationship with God has been about chasing your best self, really trying to be the best version of you.”
Those who knew him back in the day, like Hall, aren’t sure what to make of the man Donalds has turned into. Neither are voters: A July poll showed that 40% of the Republican primary electorate has not heard of him.
Yet Donalds’ ascent is undeniable. In 2024, Trump was rumored to be eyeing him for vice president. As a Black conservative, he is simultaneously seen as a renegade and a spokesperson.
Donalds’ political life is centered on the story he tells about himself. It’s about a kid from Brooklyn who had an honest-to-goodness political revelation.
How far he climbs may depend on whether voters buy it.
Byron and Erika Donalds
When Erika Lees met Byron Donalds around 2000, he was trying to turn his life around.
He was in the middle of the legal saga over the alleged bribe he took for his debit card. Hoping for a reset, he transferred to Florida State.
“At that point, I just had to look myself in the mirror and promise to never be that person again. Be a better man going forward,” Donalds said.
Lees could relate to his struggle. Donalds didn’t grow up with his father around; Lees’ parents declared bankruptcy, then divorced when she was a teen. Both watched their single mothers struggle to provide.
But Lees had figured out her path years before. She didn’t want to grind paycheck to paycheck like her mother. She wanted to make it in business. If Donalds wanted to keep up, he had to move at her speed.
At FAMU, Donalds had a light course load and little motivation. At FSU, he attended an 8 a.m. intro to finance summer class with his new girlfriend. Together, they were active members of FSU’s chapter of the Delta Sigma Pi business fraternity. Directionless when he first got to Tallahassee, Donalds began to envision a future in banking.
To spoil the ending, Erika Lees is now Erika Donalds. In an interview, she downplayed her part in Donalds’ transformation, saying her husband’s growth has largely been self-directed. But her influence on him, in college and beyond, seems undeniable.
“There are moments when you get to choose your path. I think a big part of his path is the woman he married,” said Hall, Donalds’ first wife.
In late 2002, Lees got pregnant. The two started planning a wedding. Family members told her after meeting Byron Donalds that they’d prayed she’d choose a partner with his character.
The couple wanted a ceremony before Lees started showing. Byron Donalds needed a divorce, and fast. He had no money. Hall paid for the expedited paperwork, she said.
Hall said she expected Donalds to pay her back for half. She says he never did.
An early interest in politics
Byron Donald’s first political speech lives online.
It’s 2010 and the footage is grainy. The videographer, simultaneously working to corral her two young sons, is Erika Donalds. Her husband, wearing a polo shirt tucked into jeans, delivers applause lines from the back of a pickup truck. He’s speaking at a Naples Tea Party rally.
The federal government is spending money we don’t have, Byron Donalds says. Future generations are going bankrupt before our eyes. He likens President Barack Obama’s desire to tax the wealthy to class warfare. The Donaldses weren’t rich. They bought their first home in 2007, for about $360,000. (Today, they live in a house worth about $800,000.)
Donalds had become interested in the workings of the federal government because of his job. His bosses at the investment firm CMG Life Services told him to get acquainted with U.S. financial policy, so he became a CNBC junky. When the Great Recession hit, he began to question the political system that produced the kind of congressional leaders who thought of bailouts and burdensome regulations as solutions.
For months before the speech, Donalds had attended Toastmasters meetups to refine his speaking style. His wife got the invite initially, but Donalds wanted to go, too — to develop his public speaking skills for work. Erika Donalds thought he’d do well at a Tea Party rally. A local political leader offered Byron five minutes of speaking time. So here he was.
In the middle of Byron’s speech, someone asks Erika Donalds what her husband is running for.
“He’s not running for anything,” she replies.
A year later, he was. And then every election season since, at least someone in the Donalds household has. (Erika Donalds served a term on the Collier County school board between 2014 and 2018.)
By the time of that speech in 2010, Donalds had launched a political blog, and his personal Facebook page had become a debate stage. College friends and family members would argue with him in the comments. Donalds would fire back missives hundreds of words long.
The posts align with his views today with a few exceptions.
In July of that same year, Donalds wrote, “I would never call for mass deportation. That is illogical and unrealistic.” Today, Donalds supports Trump’s push to remove people who are living in the country illegally.
In 2010, Donalds codified his newfound beliefs: He registered as a Republican.
A pivotal election
Every politician has a pivotal campaign. To date, Donalds’ was the 2020 Republican congressional race.
Caught in a heated nine-way primary for Congress, Donalds’ national brand was getting test-launched. Then a state representative, he’d introduced himself to voters in an ad as “everything the fake news media tells you doesn’t exist: a strong, Trump-supporting, gun-owning, liberty-loving, pro-life, politically incorrect Black man.”
In the wake of the national reckoning over George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis at the hands of police officers, Donalds had been interviewed on national TV. He’d preached calm, defended the institution of policing and called for peaceful protests.
The morning of the August 2020 primary, someone sent a mass text falsely claiming Donalds was dropping out of the race. Incensed, Donalds took to Facebook, blaming his political opponents for lying to voters.
The incident got national coverage, which likely helped Donalds. (His opponents have since accused Donalds of arranging the text to be sent himself, a claim for which there is no direct evidence.) He scraped by the crowded field with a 777-vote victory. In a deep red congressional district, the general election was a walkover.
By his side, through it all, was one of Donalds’ best friends: Larry Wilcoxson. When the text about Donalds leaving the race went out, Wilcoxson was there to reassure a shaken supporter. When Donalds got to Congress, he made Wilcoxson his senior political adviser.
As Donalds runs for governor, Wilcoxson, such a key figure in Donalds’ political orbit, might be his biggest liability. In 2006, years before he became close with Donalds, Wilcoxson, a former substitute teacher, was charged with three counts of alleged child molestation. He was never convicted.
The Times reached an accuser of Wilcoxson’s by phone, and she stood by her claims. The Times is not identifying her because she is the alleged victim of a sexual crime.
The Times could not reach Wilcoxson for comment. In a podcast interview that aired in February, Wilcoxson denied sexually abusing any children.
Donalds’ campaign said Wilcoxson is not a part of the 2026 team. Still, Donalds paid Wilcoxson about $134,000 during the 2024 cycle, according to the research website OpenSecrets — well after Wilcoxson’s past actions surfaced in news reports.
Donalds in Washington
A few months after the 2020 election, Donalds texted Liz Stephenson, a prominent Collier County Republican and early supporter of his, to ask for a meeting.
He wanted Stephenson to host a fundraiser for Kevin McCarthy, the No. 1 Republican in the U.S. House, so Donalds scheduled a get-together with Stephenson for the afternoon of Feb. 1, 2021, according to text messages obtained by the Times.
During that meeting, Donalds had his iPad open, Stephenson said. On the screen was a virtual hearing for a congressional committee Donalds belonged to.
Stephenson left the talk disappointed in Donalds’ seeming lack of interest in his day job.
“I hire you to represent me,” Stephenson said. “Don’t be, like, multitasking when you’re just a freshman. Do something.”
Donalds’ campaign noted that Stephenson supports one of his former local political opponents.
“The truth is that Byron was laser-focused on shutting down Joe Biden’s radical agenda,” said Danielle Alvarez, Donalds’ senior campaign adviser.
Stephenson is a part of the vocal faction of Florida Republicans who are unimpressed by Donalds. This group includes Gov. Ron DeSantis, the popular Republican Donalds hopes to succeed. In February, DeSantis said that Donalds had not been a part of Florida’s conservative victories, and he declined to endorse him for governor. (DeSantis could be holding back his endorsement for his wife, first lady Casey DeSantis, who is said to be mulling a run.)
Donalds’ voting record in Congress has netted him one of the most conservative ratings of any House member by the nonpartisan congressional tracker GovTrack. In 2021, he voted not to certify Joe Biden’s electoral victory. But in nearly five years, of the 139 bills Donalds has sponsored, one has become law.
More than policy wins, Donalds has built a national brand on conservative evangelism. He takes his message to media outlets conservative, liberal and indifferent. In the last two years, he’s done interviews with the conservative Fox and Friends, the liberal Breakfast Club and the ESPN personality Stephen A. Smith.
Prominent conservatives have taken note. In 2023, he was briefly a candidate for House speaker after Republicans ousted McCarthy from the role. In 2024, he crisscrossed the country on behalf of Trump, hoping to sway Black men, a demographic coveted by the president.
At campaign appearances, Donalds preached equal opportunity as a solution to poverty, using his biography to bolster his argument. His mom was the original school choice parent, he said, pulling him from failing New York public schools to give her son a better opportunity.
Other poor kids should have that chance, he argued, and charter schools would offer it. ( Erika Donalds runs a charter school management company, and billionaire school choice supporter Jeff Yass has given Donalds $5 million, the congressman’s largest single donation this cycle.)
Exit polls showed Trump did better with Black voters than any Republican in nearly half a century. Donalds’ advocacy made him a friend of the president, and the two remain close: Trump has called Donalds a “TOTAL WINNER!” Donalds’ phone is on silent for everyone but two people. Trump is one of them.
Donalds the history maker
Donalds would be the first Black governor of Florida, but he’s quick to downplay this fact.
“Even though I’m Black, I don’t think it’s about blackness,” Donalds told the Times. “I think what it demonstrates to the Black community is that hard work, perseverance, focus, vision, grit, a little bit of luck, that’s really what matters at the end of the day.”
In media appearances, Donalds says America used to systemically discriminate against Black people, but no longer. If anyone consistently expects him to act a certain way because of his race, it’s liberals, he argues.
In 2024, Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas, who is Black, noted Donalds has a white wife and questioned whether he has lost perspective on American history. At the time, Crockett was commenting on a quote from Donalds about how, “during Jim Crow, the Black family was together.” Donalds said Crockett’s statements were racist.
Donalds seems to relish conflict. At a town hall in Donalds’ district in April, his constituents showed up after the Trump administration announced a series of government cutbacks. Many in attendance were outraged.
Similar scenes were playing out at GOP town halls across the country, with some lawmakers getting bombarded with boos or ducking out before their events ended. A Republican leader told members flat-out to avoid town halls. Donalds didn’t listen.
Ten minutes in, things got so rowdy that an aide took to the mic to get control of the crowd.
“Ladies and gentlemen —“
“I got it,” Donalds interjected. “Chill out. Let’s roll.”
For more than an hour, Donalds settled into a groove, gamely answering questions despite the crowd’s persistent interjections. He was grilled about gun violence, heckled about Elon Musk’s cost-cutting initiative and chided for his support of Israel. The crowd didn’t like his answers. Donalds didn’t seem to care.
“I like how everybody is shouting at me,” Donalds shot back, “the Black guy on stage.”
©2025 Tampa Bay Times. Visit tampabay.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
