Erika Donalds reflects on political journey

So Erica Donalds is really a stone's throw from possibly becoming Florida's first lady. Her husband, Byron Donalds, appears to have a small polling lead right now in the race for governor over David Jolly. How would she approach her role as the state's first lady, especially when it comes to her signature issue of education reform? Fox 13's Evan Axelbank sat down with her on Fox Tampa Bay Live. If you told a young Erica Donalds that she'd be sitting down for interviews and that her husband would be a stone's throw from being elected governor. I would have bet you a million dollars that that wouldn't have happened we just we weren't involved in politics we weren't in the college republicans or in student government after graduating fsu in 2002 the young couple was already tens of thousands of dollars in student debt i chose accounting because i didn't want to be poor and i knew that if i had an accounting degree i could get a cpa i could go to law school like i had different options available to me byron planned to be in executive leadership but in finance not as the governor of the state we wanted to change our ability to make money in the future and not have to be a statistic which is something his mom really ingrained in him the political bug hit them during the obama era and he had been arguing with people online people from our childhood and our our college days about obama were you obama fans no no you hadn't i've always been a republican because my family was republican but he was always democrat because the family was Democrat. She says Rick Santelli's now famous 2009 rant on CNBC was the turning point. The government is promoting bad behavior. When the Naples Tea Party launched and they were doing rallies, we both kind of separately but then together decided to go to one of these rallies that was at lunchtime. And we each went on our lunch breaks to the Tea Party rally. By 2013, she was fed up with her child's public school and began organizing charter schools in Naples. In 2014, she was elected to the Collier County School Board. By 2016, Byron was in the Florida House. By 2021, he was in Congress. Today, Erica is a prominent part of his campaign. Primary night, TV ads, campaign stops. It was out of a lot of prayer and discussion and thoughtfulness on the effect it would have on me, on my career, on the children, on their careers, and on Byron and his career. She came under scrutiny when the Florida Bulldog publication revealed that Donald's campaign disclosures at first didn't include millions of taxpayer dollars that Erica's charter school nonprofits took in. We were successful in launching all of those schools, so I have no regrets whatsoever. Yes, becoming first lady would broaden the megaphone that she has to argue for school choice and workforce programs. If her husband wins, she expects their lives to change, but not completely. We actually don't talk about politics much at home at all, which is so funny because things will happen and people will be like, well, what does Byron think about this? And I'm like, I don't know, because we we don't like we have so many other things to talk about. Though some polls are close between Byron and Democrat David Jolly, she insists her husband will have a decisive win on November 3rd. I don't really get nervous. Byron doesn't either. That's kind of something we have in common. Byron and Erica Donalds are two weeks from finding out if their journey winds up at the top. Evan Axelbank, Fox 13 News. We asked David Jolly's campaign for an interview with Laura Jolly, but the campaign declined.