Jerry Demings, the mayor of Orange County, Fla., has filed to run for governor next year as a Democrat, expanding the field of candidates seeking to replace Gov. Ron DeSantis, a term-limited Republican.
Mr. Demings has led the county, home to Orlando and one of the few places in the state that still lean left, since 2018. Three years ago, his wife, former Representative Val Demings, ran unsuccessfully against Senator Marco Rubio, who later became President Trump’s secretary of state. Mr. Demings is a former Orange County sheriff and a former police chief in Orlando, Florida’s fourth-largest city.
Mr. Demings could prove a strong primary challenger for David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who has been campaigning for governor as a Democrat since June.
“In terms of my political philosophy, I’m more of a centrist,” Mr. Demings told The New York Times in an interview last month, as chatter about his potential candidacy grew. The county mayor position is nonpartisan, he noted, though he won three elections for sheriff as a Democrat.
The leading Republican candidate so far in the 2026 governor’s race is Representative Byron Donalds of Naples, whom Mr. Trump has endorsed. Paul Renner, a former speaker of the Florida House, is also running. Mr. DeSantis has not yet backed any Republican in the race; both his wife, Casey DeSantis, and his lieutenant governor, Jay Collins, have been considering runs.
Mr. Donalds and Mr. Demings are both African American in a state that has never had a Black governor. Florida’s first Black nominee for governor from a major party was Andrew Gillum, a Democrat who was the mayor of Tallahassee at the time. He lost to Mr. DeSantis in 2018 by fewer than 32,000 votes. Florida now leans much more Republican.
Mr. Demings opened a campaign account on Friday, according to records from the Florida Division of Elections that were first reported by The Orlando Sentinel. He is expected to formally announce his candidacy on Thursday. A campaign spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.
“This is a desperate attempt to keep the Demings name in the headlines after years of failure,” the Republican Party of Florida said in a statement, adding that Mr. Demings’s campaign was “destined to flop.”
As the mayor of Orange County, Mr. Demings clashed with Mr. DeSantis over the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, questioning why the governor and his administration were not doing more to stop the virus from spreading.
This summer, James Uthmeier, the Florida attorney general, warned that the governor could remove Mr. Demings and all six Orange County commissioners for declining to allow county jail officials to transport immigration detainees to federal detention facilities by amending an agreement known as 287(g).
Mr. Demings signed the agreement in August under “protest and extreme duress,” he said in a news conference at the time, adding, “We signed the damn thing because we really had to.” The confrontation fueled speculation that Mr. Demings might run for governor himself.
Patricia Mazzei is the lead reporter for The Times in Miami, covering Florida and Puerto Rico.
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