John Morgan said Monday he will not run for Florida governor in 2026, but he is not stepping away from the race for attention. Instead, the trial lawyer said he plans to file paperwork in the coming days to form a third party in Florida and will launch a public contest to name it, with a $100,000 cash prize for the winning submission.
“For about the last year and a half, a lot of people have been asking me to run for governor,” Morgan said in a video posted Monday on X. “It’s a real honor. But I’m not going to do it.”
The announcement lands as Florida’s governor race takes shape around an open seat. Gov. Ron DeSantis is term-limited, Republican U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds has the backing of President Trump, and former U.S. Rep. David Jolly is among the Democrats lining up for the job. Morgan’s move adds a wildcard to a contest already pulling together on familiar partisan lines.
Morgan has spent years as one of the most visible money men in Florida politics. He bankrolled campaigns to legalize medical marijuana in the state and to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour, and both measures passed even though Florida requires 60% support for constitutional amendments. He has framed that record as proof that voters will back ideas that cut across party labels when they are given a clear choice.
He said the same logic is behind his new effort. In remarks tied to the video, Morgan said Florida’s two-party system no longer reflects the views of most voters, and he told Politico he is working to make sure the naming contest complies with state and federal laws governing promotions and rewards. That detail matters because the plan is more than a stunt: it is the first visible step in what would be a legally and politically difficult effort to build a third party in a state dominated by Republicans and Democrats.
The obstacle is not just money or noise. Launching a viable third party in Florida would require extensive legal filings, credible candidates, significant fundraising and ballot access across the state, all while the state’s voter rolls as of early 2026 still show Republicans with a clear advantage over Democrats and a growing number of independent or unaffiliated voters. Morgan has been around the state’s ballot politics long enough to know the terrain, and this time he is betting that the machinery behind his next move may matter more than whether he ever enters the governor’s race himself.