SANFORD, Fla. — Republican gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds was making a point about improving Florida roads when an off-the-cuff joke about women getting to the beauty salon quickly handed his opponents one of the first viral clashes of the general election.
The Byron Donalds beauty salon remark came Tuesday during a campaign stop in Sanford, where Donalds was discussing road maintenance and the frustration Floridians feel when trips take longer than they should.
“Everybody gets frustrated when it just takes longer to get from Point A to Point B, and looking at the ladies in this room, we want to make sure that you continue to have your hair looking good so you can get to the beauty salon as quick as you can,” Donalds said, according to a Tampa Bay Times report on the exchange.
Donalds then acknowledged a woman in the audience and mimicked patting down his hair, according to the report. The comment drew chuckles in the room.
Online, it landed much differently.
Gwen Graham calls Donalds remark ‘ridiculous and insulting’
Former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, the running mate of Democratic gubernatorial nominee David Jolly, quickly turned the comment back on Donalds.
“Ridiculous and insulting,” Graham wrote on X. “Women will use roads to drive to the polls on November 3 to make sure this guy isn’t governor.”
The criticism helped propel the remark into a broader social-media argument Wednesday. The Tampa Bay Times account, republished by AOL, reported that the backlash was trending on X by midday, with some users describing Donalds’ line as sexist, tone-deaf or misogynistic.
But the reaction was hardly one-sided.
Some conservative women defended Donalds and questioned whether Graham and other critics were making too much of an obvious joke. One woman responding to Graham asked whether there was “anything at all truly insulting” about the remark.
Donalds’ campaign was even more dismissive.
“This silly stunt coming from people who live to be offended is nothing more than manufactured outrage,” campaign spokesperson Skylar Swanson told the Times. Swanson also accused Democrats of trying to become offended “on behalf of all women.”
That exchange gave both campaigns something they increasingly need as Florida moves into the general election: a simple, emotionally charged moment that can be clipped, shared and argued over far beyond the original campaign stop.
A roads pitch becomes a campaign fight
The beauty salon comment was only a small part of Donalds’ appearance.
Reporting from Florida Politics on his Sanford remarks shows Donalds also used the stop to argue that Florida needs better road maintenance and to warn supporters about the power a Democratic governor would have over appointments and enforcement of state policy.
But the gender-specific joke quickly overshadowed much of that message.
The episode also arrived just days after Florida’s primary elections formally set up the race between Donalds and Jolly. Donalds won the Republican nomination, while Jolly secured the Democratic nomination in the contest to succeed term-limited Gov. Ron DeSantis. Local 10 reported on the November matchup following the primary.
Donalds has since selected Miami Republican state Sen. Bryan Ávila as his running mate. Ávila, a Florida Army National Guard veteran and former state House member, joined the ticket this week, according to WUSF’s report on Donalds’ lieutenant governor pick.
Graham is running alongside Jolly.
The Florida Division of Elections lists Donalds and Jolly among the candidates qualified for the Nov. 3 general election, providing the official backdrop for a campaign in which seemingly casual comments can quickly become statewide political ammunition. Florida’s official candidate listing can be viewed through the Division of Elections.
The remark shows how quickly the general election can change subjects
Donalds is known for a conversational campaign style that often involves reacting directly to people in the room. In Sanford, the beauty salon line appeared to be one of those improvisational moments rather than a prepared policy statement.
That distinction has done little to stop opponents from using it.
For Graham and Democrats, the remark offered a way to question how Donalds talks about women. For Donalds’ campaign and his supporters, the backlash offered its own political message: that Democrats and online critics were deliberately turning a joke into an offense.
Either way, Donalds went to Sanford talking about Florida roads.
By Wednesday, Florida politics was talking about beauty salons.
And with the general election still more than two months away, the fight over what Donalds meant — and whether voters found it funny or insulting — is unlikely to be the last campaign remark to take on a life of its own online.
