Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who withdrew as President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general ahead of the release of a House Ethics panel report that accused him of “regularly” paying for sex and using drugs, said that he was “starting to think about running for governor” next year in Florida.
The contest for the open seat in Trump’s adopted home state is expected to draw significant interest next year, as Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was elected in 2018 and 2022, is term-limited.
“I have a compelling vision for the state,” Gaetz, a far-right provocateur, told the Tampa Bay Times in a report published Tuesday.
In a telephone interview with The New York Times on Wednesday, Gaetz said that he had spoken to Trump about a possible bid for governor and that he “knows that I have that ambition.” He declined to elaborate on their conversation, other than to say that the president-elect had shared advice with him and that he expected several of Trump’s other allies would contend for the job.
Requests for comment were also left with Trump’s aides.
Gaetz, 42, cruised to a fifth term in his safely Republican House district on Florida’s panhandle Nov. 5. But he resigned his seat Nov. 13, shortly after Trump chose him for attorney general, trying to short-circuit the release of an Ethics Committee report that concluded he had engaged in sexual misconduct and taken illicit drugs, allegations that he has denied.
He also filed an eleventh-hour lawsuit in federal court in an attempt to stop the report’s release, but that effort failed.
The panel found that from at least 2017 to 2020, Gaetz “regularly paid women for engaging in sexual activity with him.” The report said that in 2017, Gaetz had “engaged in sexual activity with a 17-year-old girl,” who was paid.
From 2017 to 2019, the report said, Gaetz used or possessed illegal drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy “on multiple occasions,” and accepted lavish gifts, including transportation to and lodging in the Bahamas, in excess of permissible amounts.
Asked Wednesday if he believed the Ethics Committee’s report would hurt him in a race for governor, Gaetz scoffed at the idea.
“Those lies have been circling me for years,” he said.
After withdrawing as Trump’s nominee for U.S. attorney general — the first big setback to the president-elect during his transition — Gaetz was hired as host of a weekly prime-time show on the far-right One America News Network.
In his remarks to the Tampa Bay Times, Gaetz suggested that he could help stabilize an insurance crisis that has been gripping Florida, one that was exacerbated by Hurricanes Helene and Milton and has roiled both the industry and those who rely on its coverage.
“I understand how to fix the insurance problem, and it’s not to hand the keys to the state over to the insurance industry,” he said. “If I run, I would be the most pro-consumer candidate on the Republican side.”
Gaetz’s floating of his interest in the governor’s office came just days after members of 119th Congress were sworn in on Capitol Hill, where Gaetz was known for his bare-knuckles political style in trying to advance Trump’s agenda.
The governor’s race in Florida, once a battleground state that has been tilting toward Republicans, is one of the high-profile contests on the election calendar in 2026.
The contest is shaping up to be another key test of Trump’s influence in his adopted home state, where his endorsement helped carry DeSantis to victory in 2018 in a tight race.
Possible other Republican contenders include Rep. Byron Donalds, who was a prominent surrogate for Trump among Black voters in 2024 and has welcomed speculation about his interest in the job.
On the Democratic side, Rep. Jared Moskowitz, a centrist whom DeSantis tapped to run the state’s disaster-relief agency in 2018, told Politico in March that he had not ruling out running. State Sen. Shevrin Jones of Miami-Dade County, the state’s first gay Black lawmaker, has also emerged as a potential candidate.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times. © 2025 The New York Times
