The 2026 Gubernatorial election is a year and a half away and it’s already looking like it could be one of the most crowded fields in recent memory.
Republican Congressman Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly have announced they are running already. Broward State Senator Jason Pizzo, a democrat until recently, has also announced he’s running with no party affiliation.
And billionaire personal injury lawyer John Morgan is also considering jumping into the race—and likely, under a completely new party, according to his address during a Capitol City Tiger Bay luncheon earlier this month.
“What I believe a third party would do in Florida and in America is have a third party that would bring compromise. You got a third Republicans, you got a third democratic socialist, and then you got us stuck in the middle together,” he said.
Over 28% of Florida voters are registered as an NPA or in a third party. University of South Florida Professor Emerita Susan MacManus thinks Morgan and Pizzo are looking to tap into a growing state of unhappiness with America’s two major party system.
“What we're seeing is growing disaffection against both of the major parties and and people focusing far less on party as a voting queue than they do on issues and increasingly the personalities running. So, I think these are kind of new dynamics that we're just starting to watch across the country and in Florida that could make it very, very interesting in Florida next year,” she said.
University of Central Florida Political Science Professor Aubrey Jewett said Morgan’s view of the current state of politics is partially correct, but he adds that what NPA voters truly believe is harder to place. He points out some NPA’s are centrists and believe both major parties are too extreme, but other NPA’s believe the two parties are too centrist.
If you do a follow up question for a lot of those independents, if you ask if they lean one way or the other, what you find is that a majority of those people who are independent actually pretty consistently vote for one party or the other, right, Democratic or Republican,” he said.
Jewitt also points out that a prominent NPA candidate isn’t uncharted territory in Florida.
During Marco Rubio’s first senate run in 2010, former governor Charlie Crist left the Republican party and ran as an NPA, while Kendrick Meek ran as a Democrat. Crist and Meek’s combined vote share was greater than Rubio’s, but with three major candidates, Rubio won by about 20 points.
“They pretty much split the anti-Rubio vote in the general election, and Rubio won handily,” Jewitt said.
He thinks a similar dynamic is likely to happen in a three or potentially four major candidate gubernatorial race in 2026. With Pizzo and Morgan both being former Democrats, its likely they will be competing for the same pieces of pie. With Republican’s having a million-voter lead over democrats in the state already, a crowded field could be what the GOP is hoping for.
“They'd certainly be the favorite, even in a two-person race, given what's happened in this state. But if, if you divide up the anti-Trump, anti-DeSantis, anti-Republican vote in either two or three ways, depending on how many of these independents run. That's good news for the Republicans,” he said.
Meanwhile, MacManus says a four-person race could get messy, making it hard to cleanly predict. A candidate would only need the most support to, meaning they could win with under 50% support. In that situation, MacManus thinks Morgan’s celebrity status and wealth to self-fund could make him a potent wildcard.
“Everyone knows who John Morgan is. So, he's not worried about the money to get his name recognition up. He could enter at the last minute, because he is a household name, and he's got the money to buy the ad time and the campaign staff,” she said.
Morgan has said if he enters, it will be with only a few months left before the election.