Rep. Byron Donalds explains his failure to vote on Fox News Sunday. (Image: Fox News Sunday)
Oct. 2, 2023 by David Silverberg
Rep. Byron Donalds (R-19-Fla.), must now live with the consequences of his failure to cast a vote on one of the most momentous issues of the 118th Congress.
The failure to cast a vote implies an inability to make a decision, to take a stand, to hold and defend a political position. Doing those things are the marks of a leader and a skillful politician.
In this case, Donalds’ non-vote was an act of cowardice and dereliction of duty, a failure to serve his constituents and the partisans who supported and elected him.
Why is this? What were the circumstances of the vote and why was it so important? What are the likely consequences of this failure for Donalds, his ambitions and his political future?
The circumstances
On the afternoon of last Saturday, Sept. 30, it looked like the United States federal government would shut down at midnight.
House Speaker Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-20-Calif.) had until that moment been unable to get the Republican caucus to vote in favor of a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government funded.
The chief opponent of that CR was Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-1-Fla.), a member of the hard-right, Trumpist, 45-member, Make America Great Again (MAGA) Freedom Caucus.
Donalds had been a player in events leading to that impasse. He had negotiated with McCarthy on behalf of the Caucus and endorsed a compromise CR. That CR never advanced and Donalds was ferociously denounced by Gaetz and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-14-Ga.), as well as his own constituents for his willingness to compromise.
McCarthy wanted to pass his CR with only Republican votes but it was clear that he couldn’t do that by the deadline so he turned to the House Democrats. The CR resulting from those negotiations had no money for Ukraine, which Democrats and many Republicans wanted. However, it would keep government functioning for 45 more days until a more complete solution could be found.
Very importantly for Southwest Florida, the CR contained $16 billion to replenish the National Disaster Relief Fund and keep the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) functioning. FEMA is playing an outsized role in the region given the ravages of Hurricane Ian last year. FEMA funding is also essential to all of Florida in the wake of this year’s Hurricane Idalia.
So this was not some abstract intellectual debate being played out in some remote ivory tower. While local media looked backward and celebrated individual tales of resilience and signs of recovery on the anniversary of the hurricane, all future progress was in jeopardy. The CR also included money to keep people clothed, housed and fed on the ground in Southwest Florida.
On Saturday afternoon the new CR went to the House floor. It needed a two-thirds vote of the members to suspend the rules and go straight to a vote of approval. The votes were there and it passed overwhelmingly, 335 to 91. All Democrats but one voted for it along with 126 Republicans. Only 90 Republicans voted against it.
In the final tally, 426 of 435 members of Congress—roughly 98 percent—voted on the CR one way or another. None abstained (an option if a member doesn’t want to vote for or against a measure). Seven members did not vote at all.
One of these was Byron Donalds. (The others were: Reps. Earl Carter (R-1-Ga.), John Carter (R-31-Texas), John Joyce (R-13-Pa.), Anna Paulina Luna (R-13-Fla.), Mary Petolta (D-At Large-Alaska), and Katie Porter (D-47-Calif.).
To date, Donalds has offered several explanations for his failure to vote.
Immediately after the vote he announced on X that he would have voted “no” but the time to vote closed before he could cast his ballot.
On Sunday, Donalds appeared on Fox News Sunday and was asked directly about his absence.
“First of all, why did you miss this vote and not vote?” asked host Shannon Bream. “Everyone knew it was coming, it was a big deal. You put something on X, formerly known as Twitter, but the replies are pretty brutal.”
“Listen, here’s what happened. I was coming up the elevator in the Capitol Building to go vote,” replied Donalds. “They closed the vote down because there were members on the House floor who were changing their votes from ‘yes’ to ‘no.’ I was told that there were senators on our floor begging our leadership to close the vote so the measure would pass because it needed two-thirds. The leadership knew I was a ‘no.’ If I was a ‘yes’ they would have held the vote open for me. It’s that simple.”
Analysis: The ‘whys’ have it
Donalds’ explanation simply does not hold water. Members have a specified time in which to vote. The period for changing votes comes after the formal voting has closed. Four hundred twenty six members of Congress were present and able to vote during that time. (Although one, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-16-NY) pulled a fire alarm in a House office building, supposedly to gain more time but he says accidentally. The incident is under investigation although Republicans are calling for his prosecution.)
But in the case of Donalds, one has to wonder why he was supposedly rushing to vote during the change period, after the vote had closed.
The obvious conclusion is that he was present in the Capitol for the vote; he knew the voting was taking place and he could have easily voted. But he didn’t want to vote, so he held back until the voting was fully closed and then blamed his absence on the Republican leadership, i.e., McCarthy.
The other alternatives are that he was so neglectful and indifferent to the vote that he simply ignored it until it was too late (perhaps having a Johnny Walker in his office?) or he is so spectacularly inept after nearly three years in Congress that he doesn’t know the Capitol, doesn’t know how to get to the House chamber and doesn’t know how to vote.
It’s hard not to draw a conclusion from this interpretation of events: that purely and simply, Byron Donalds is lying.
This raises the question: Why would Donalds deliberately not want to vote?
It puts the spotlight on the difficulty of making the kinds of hard choices that face leaders.
If Donalds had voted “no,” he would have been voting to significantly damage the United States by bringing its government to a shuddering halt. More parochially, he would have been voting against the $16 billion in disaster aid that his state and district so desperately need. He would have been directly harming the people of Southwest Florida who are looking for federal help at this time and who voted for him in the last election. He would have come in for outrage and criticism for enabling this suicidal course of action and not just from marginal liberal bloggers but from community leaders and elected local Republicans.
However, if he voted “yes,” he would have outraged his MAGA base and his idol Donald Trump, who had called for a shutdown to stop his own prosecution. Donalds was already being hammered by Gaetz for his willingness to compromise on the CR, now the voices calling him a Republican In Name Only and a turncoat to the extreme Trumpist faith he has embraced would have reached a screeching new volume.
Neither course was palatable. He could have abstained but that would have also been on the record and drawn criticism—and he would have stood out as the only abstention.
So the easiest—if most cowardly—course was to skip the vote altogether, if possible, and hope no one would notice. Then, when it was noticed, he tried to shift the blame to forces outside his control.
Even Fox News didn’t buy that.
Commentary: The consequences
It is premature to say that this action—or inaction—ends Donalds’ political career. People have come back from worse setbacks in the past.
But it certainly doesn’t help at all.
Donalds’ political career has been marked by his ambition. He embraced the Republican Party credo of “just win, baby,” which holds any falsehood, innuendo, hypocrisy or contradiction acceptable as long as there’s election victory at the end of the day. He built his brand as “everything the fake news media says doesn't exist: a [Donald Trump]-supporting, liberty-loving, pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment black man.” It enabled him to win election and represent a heavily MAGA, 85-percent white district. He fought masks and embraced vaccine skepticism during the worst pandemic of the century as it killed constituents. He is willing to front for the nuclear power industry and follow an ideological line that often contradicts the real interests of his coastal district.
Once in the House, his ambition glowed again when he ran for the third-place Republican position, only to lose. Then, as a sophomore representative-elect, he had the brazenness to put himself forward as a Speaker of the House, nominated by no less than his close friend Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-3-Colo.). It brought him international prominence, good committee assignments and raised his star in the Republican firmament.
Donalds’ unique position as a vocal black MAGA Republican provides all sorts of opportunities: there was always the Speakership, or else a slot as Donald Trump’s vice presidential running mate, or a run at governor of Florida in 2026 when the current governor steps down. There was the chance for significant fundraising, attracting major donors and spreading his own largesse to build his following among other Republicans and the public at large. And there were the perks of national, mainstream media appearances, speaking slots at conservative conclaves and the chance to meet and greet famous politicians and celebrities.
However, by ducking this important vote and displaying abject cowardice in the face of both enemies and circumstances, he has confirmed what his critics have long alleged: that he lacks the character and capability to handle those higher offices and greater responsibilities.
Instead of a smooth potential path to the speakership or higher office in the Republican caucus, the failure to vote showed Donalds unable to lead or take a stand and face the consequences. He transgressed Trump’s sacred dictum that a shutdown was desirable. He enraged Gaetz and the Gaetzniks who are ready to burn the nation to the ground. He also provided Gaetz a weapon against himself should they both pursue the governorship. He violated the holy unity of the Freedom Caucus, whose whole purpose is to ensure lockstep loyalty to whatever positions 80 percent of them adopt. Constituents who tend to ignore congressional politics may forget this incident but his absence will be remembered by his Republican colleagues in the House. And he has invited a MAGA revolt in his own district that could take the form of an even more extreme primary challenge in the next election.
Donalds has responded to criticism of his non-vote with his usual barrage of accusations, imprecations and denunciations of President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, Democrats, border crossers, and phantom far-left radicals.
That may fool some people who, as President Abraham Lincoln once said, can be fooled all of the time.
But as Lincoln also famously noted: “You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
This time a lot of people aren’t fooled.
Liberty lives in light
© 2023 by David Silverberg