While former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz’s attempt to become attorney general may only have lasted eight days, he could be making a run for governor in 2026.
Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini wrote in a post on X on Saturday that he predicts that Gaetz will be the Sunshine State’s next governor at the end of Governor Ron DeSantis’s second term. Gaetz responded to Sabatini’s post using a gif of the Florida state flag.
Gaetz abruptly resigned from Congress after being nominated to be President-elect Donald Trump’s next attorney general. But the 42-year-old’s time as the AG nominee was short-lived after there were new developments in a sex trafficking investigation against him. While the Department of Justice chose to not charge Gaetz last year, the House Ethics Committee continued the investigation.
https://t.co/yDMNvCAGJm pic.twitter.com/Z8mPniNUeS
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) November 23, 2024
According to CNN, Gaetz withdrew his nomination after they reached out for comment about a new accusation that he had sex with a 17-year-old girl in 2017. Gaetz has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
But on Thursday afternoon, he chose to take his name out of the running to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
“While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition,” he said in a post on X.
Trump commented on the withdrawal on Truth Social, saying that Gatez, “was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect.”
“Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!” he added.
On Monday morning, Gaetz shared a meme on X about cooling temperatures, writing, “If I run for Florida Governor, it will be on a platform to outlaw frost.”
So true.
— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) November 25, 2024
If I run for Florida Governor, it will be on a platform to outlaw frost. pic.twitter.com/1BRjkN5cil
DeSantis will leave office after the 2026 election as he’s term-limited. DeSantis ran in the 2024 Republican primary, attempting to take on Trump, but was defeated even with the backing of billionaire Elon Musk, now a close confidant of the president-elect.
The Sunshine State has chosen Republican governors since the 1998 election of Jeb Bush, who was an early frontrunner in the 2016 Republican presidential primary.
Gaetz has been re-elected to his northwest Florida 1st congressional district since 2016, but it remains unclear if he would have an appeal to the state as a whole.
He was elected to serve in the next Congress but has said that he won’t return to the House.
“I’m still going to be in the fight, but it’s going to be from a new perch,” Gaetz said last week on Charlie Kirk’s rightwing podcast.
“It seems like a pretty poetic time to allow that great new blood to come in, to allow my district to have high-quality representation,” he added.
