FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds won the Republican nomination for Florida governor and former Rep. David Jolly picked up the Democratic nod in the state's primary elections Tuesday, setting the stage for a November battle to replace outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Tuesday’s primaries gave final form to a fall ballot whose races will test President Donald Trump’s grip on his adopted state and Democrats’ ability to resurrect Florida as a national political battleground. Florida has moved notably to the right since Trump's first election win in 2016, though Democrats hope to regain ground from his slumping popularity ratings.

In another top race Tuesday, progressive state Rep. Angie Nixon won the Democratic nomination for a U.S. Senate special election, defeating retired Army Lt. Col Alex Vindman, a former National Security Council official who testified in Trump’s first impeachment case in 2019.

Nixon will face Sen. Ashley Moody, winner of the Republican nomination, in November's contest to fill the last two years of Marco Rubio’s term. Rubio vacated the seat to became Trump's secretary of state last year.

Meanwhile, Donalds banked on Trump ’s endorsement to secure his party's nomination and is hoping it will help his chances in November of being elected Florida's first Black governor. He beat opponents Tuesday including a former DeSantis running mate, Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, and political newcomer James Fishback.

The 47-year-old congressman Donalds told his supporters at a Universal Studios resort hotel that he’d heard from GOP rivals who pledged their help in winning the general election.

“The primary is over,” he said. “Tonight we put aside our differences. Tonight we are one united Republican Party.”

The Democrats’ candidate for governor, Jolly, is a former Republican congressman who switched parties last year. He did not shy away from his partisan history -- or his straight down the center political beliefs -- as he addressed supporters Tuesday night.

“To my Democratic friends, thank you for welcoming me into the party,” he said, which got a “woo!” from the crowd.

Jolly’s speech detailed a platform that balances between both political parties: an embrace of capitalism and a lean and government, but one that “needs to do its part to fill the gaps,” including in education and housing. Then he turned to social issues, where current Gov. Ron DeSantis has become a champion of the conservative cause.

“As an old-school Republican, I talk about ending the culture wars not to celebrate some progressive platform,” he said, “but because I still believe in the old school Republican, Libertarian policy that government should simply stay out of your life, and stay out of your bedroom.”

DeSantis, a leading conservative figure who has clashed and collaborated with Trump over the years, is barred from running for a third consecutive term.

For Congress, Tuesday's biggest contest involved longtime Democratic U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who defeated former U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and others in a redrawn south Florida district.

Wasserman Schultz, who is white, urged voters in the new, plurality Black district to help her win a 12th term. Cherfilus-McCormick had sought a comeback after resigning earlier this year under a pending federal indictment and threat of House ethics sanctions.

Donalds is trying to make history — and Jolly, too

There have been three elected Black governors in U.S. history. Yet the 47-year-old Donalds is more likely to tout his conservative credentials than the possibility of joining that select group as campaigning opens for November. He has promised to push tax cuts, overhaul Florida's insurance regulations to lower consumer costs and seek greater price transparency from healthcare providers.

Donalds talked Tuesday night of his economic struggles with his wife Erica when they were a newly married couple. And while he ran with Trump’s endorsement, he has emphasized Floridians’ economic hardships without blaming the president and said he wants a state where people “can give your kids a better shot than you have.”

Trump has had an inconsistent record on picks for governor in primaries this year, and a strong showing by Donalds would leave him, and Republicans in general, in a more commanding position for November. Though DeSantis coasted to reelection in 2022, he squeaked into office in 2018 by little more of 32,000 ballots out of 8.1 million cast.

Meanwhile, Jolly is hoping to prove a party-switching former Republican can actually carry the Democratic banner in a state where that's failed before. Democrats nominated former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist in 2022 only to see him lose by nearly 20 percentage points to DeSantis.

Rich Chamberlin, a retiree in Port St. Lucie, said he supported Jolly in Tuesday's primary, spurred on by attack ads against him.

“I saw anti-Jolly ads. I said ‘Ok, if they are against him, then I must be for him,'" Chamberlin said, adding it didn't matter to him that Jolly was once a Republican.

Can Democrats make the Senate race interesting?

Moody, a former state attorney general tapped for Rubio's seat in 2025, was already in a strong position as she pursued the GOP nomination. DeSantis, when he appointed her, praised her as a law-and-order prosecutor ready to help Trump “shut the border,” tame inflation, and overhaul a federal bureaucracy “run amok.”

Democrats face a familiar theme of 2026 primaries, with the progressive Nixon confronting Vindman from the party's center-left establishment. Vindman's testimony in 2019 was notable in the Democrat-led House impeachment case that led to Trump's acquittal in the Republican-led Senate. Trump ousted Vindman afterward.

Floridians haven’t sent a Democrat to the Senate since 2012.

Wasserman Schultz runs - and wins - in a new plurality Black district

Serving in Congress since 2005 , she entered a new district — thanks to DeSantis' successful push for new congressional maps intended to boost Trump's midterm election prospects.

It’s not the first time Wasserman Schultz has had to sway new voters after Republicans tinkered with boundaries. But this time she was the only white candidate in a plurality Black district — the redrawn Florida 20th, concentrated in the most diverse parts of South Florida's Broward County. It's the most Democratic House district in Florida, meaning she will be a prohibitive favorite in November.

Her four Black primary opponents — including Cherfilus-McCormick — had argued that the district requires a Black representative. But the voters went with a candidate who touted long experience from serving in Congress since 2005.

Surrounded by her campaign staff Tuesday night, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz tearfully thanked voters for having confidence in her. “(I will work) to make all of you proud, to make sure that the people we spoke to all across this district know that I will fight so they can pay their rent,” Schultz said.

She said she hoped to live up to the legacy of Alcee Hastings, a long-time representative of District 20 who passed away in 2021. Schultz will be the first representative of the new District 20 despite controversy regarding her running in the historically Black-represented district.

Republican Rep. Cory Mills faces primary challenges

In other races, former television news reporter Ryan Elijah won the Republican nomination for Florida’s 7th Congressional District, ousting scandal-plagued U.S. Rep. Cory Mills.

A two-term congressman, Mills had spent months denying allegations of domestic violence against a former girlfriend and other controversies. Among allegations, Mills has denied accusations that he abused a former girlfriend.

Florida Republicans including DeSantis had abandoned Mills ahead of the primary. And Trump, though initially backing Mills in February, did not include him in a list of endorsements released this week.

Elijah advances to the general election in a central Florida district that is considered reliably Republican.

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Associated Press reporters Gisela Salomon in Miami and David Fischer in Port St. Lucie, Florida, contributed.