In a wide ranging conversation with WLRN, Erika Donalds, the wife of Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds, offered thoughts on immigration, the role of local governments in Florida and education policy. She spoke with WLRN on Friday in front of a live audience at the Tower Club in Fort Lauderdale.
Donalds said she sympathizes with over 300,000 Venezuelans and Haitians in Florida who recently lost Temporary Protected Status, or TPS, after the Trump administration stripped the groups of the legal residency.
" My heart goes out to these families," she said. "Taking that away made them into illegal immediately when they were not illegal, and we understand why that has caused such consternation. It hasn't really been worked out yet how that is going to be enforced."
Asked if her husband might follow the same hardline immigration policies as Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has pressured local governments to enter into agreements with federal immigration authorities, Donalds did not directly respond. She did say, however, that guidance needs to come from the Trump administration on how it will enforce immigration laws on people who until recently had legal status and had no criminal issues whatsoever.
"It's not realistic that they're going to be able to deport all of the TPS individuals right now, right? We don't have the resources for that. That's not happening," she said. "But no one has also come out and said, 'Okay, this is how we're going to handle all these individuals,' and that needs to happen as soon as possible so that we all know what the situation is. It's hard to respond when we haven't gotten that clear directive from the federal government whose law it is that we're operating under."
State government power vs. local government
Over the last decade, Florida has experienced a centralization of power, stripping local governments of the ability to make many decisions and funneling that power to the state level. Decisions from zoning to the regulation of ports, living wage standards, labor protections, regulating housing on farms, the installation of fake grass in a yard, have all been transferred to the state and removed from local discretion. The erosion of local authority has rubbed local officials across the political spectrum the wrong way, as WLRN has reported.
Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Jolly has made it a point to explicitly run on the concept of bringing local control back. A former Republican himself, Jolly's website repeats what was once seen as a steadfast Republican maxim: "Government closest to the people knows best."
Erika Donalds said the maxim has its limits. Too much local control can make things difficult for businesses in Florida, she said.
" I think there needs to be a balance there between community preferences and the impact that that has on businesses' ability to employ people and grow," she told WLRN.
On the Live Local Act, a law originally passed in 2023 that allows developers to leapfrog over local decision-making if at least 40% of units are considered "workforce housing," Donalds said that while she understands objections of local governments, in some cases the local governments brought the heavy handed measure upon themselves. She said local governments often bowed down to "local pressure" in refusing to change zoning laws that heavily restricted the kind of housing that can be built, while at the same time also asking for state housing funding.
" I think if local government wants to maintain control of those decisions, then they need to not cry to Tallahassee to solve a problem that they have the ability to solve and refuse to do so," she said. " They were very concerned about affordable housing, [they were] not willing to maybe adopt some of the harder things to do as local officials to actually fix it, such as density changes."
She added: "I do think that it's probably gonna be revisited in Tallahassee to try to, again, get back to balance."
On the other hand, she said communities should be in the driver seat for decisions about whether data centers are built in their neighborhoods.
School vouchers
Donalds also offered thoughts on the future of the controversial state vouchers program that will send $4.5 billion in state dollars to private school students this year, money that is not going to students of traditional schools and charter schools.
" The parents are, as consumers, invested in the success of their child such that they are deciding where to send their child. They are the ones holding that school accountable because the government, frankly, has done a terrible job, a terrible job. So they're fired, as far as I'm concerned, as far as the principal decision maker on education, and parents need to be the ones who control those funds, and that's what's happening right now," said Donalds.
Opponents have called the voucher system a transfer of wealth towards wealthy families. Studies have shown that the vast majority of students receiving voucher money were already attending private schools.
The swift growth of vouchers has quickly ballooned from $3.2 billion in the 2023-24 school year to over $4.5 billion budgeted for this year. Money for the vouchers is being pulled from the same pot of state money used to fund traditional public schools and charter schools. The rapid decline in funding has alarmed traditional public schools as well as charter schools — an industry that Donalds has long championed and worked in.
In Collier County, where Donalds was once an elected school board member, traditional public schools and charters are now receiving less than 40% of the state funding they would have received before the 2023 voucher expansion. In Miami-Dade, more than half the state funding is being funneled to private school vouchers. On a per-pupil ratio, private school students that receive vouchers in Miami-Dade are receiving about $8,000 in state funding, while traditional and charter school students will receive less than $3,000.
Asked if the money for vouchers should come from the same pot of state money that funds traditional public and charter schools, Donalds said " Absolutely, yes."
" That is how you get the impact of free market competition," she said.
Copyright 2026 WLRN
