Matt Gaetz’s brief stint as Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Justice Department has Washington reeling after a whirlwind week.
The congressman from Florida resigned abruptly from the House days after winning another term, and stated that he wouldn’t serve in the upcoming Congress set to take shape in January. His departure — and his nomination to the post of attorney general — were a shock to Republicans and Democrats alike on Capitol Hill.
The drip-drip quickly began. First, it was revealed that Gaetz had convinced Trump to nominate him and resigned from Congress less than a week before the House Ethics Committee was due to release an extensive report on the allegations that he had sex with a minor while in office. Then, it was revealed the committee had interviewed his alleged victim.
Finally, on Thursday, CNN went public with a story confirming that Gaetz’s unnamed accuser had told investigators about a second alleged sexual encounter at the same party between Gaetz and a 17-year-old girl. Gaetz flatly denied the emerging accusations.
The network also revealed that his withdrawal from contention occurred just 45 minutes after their reporters asked for comment on the revelations of the second alleged encounter.
So where does Matt Gaetz, rising MAGA star, go from here?
First, and most obviously, he could return to the House. It’s not entirely clear how that would work at the moment — in his resignation letter to Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, the congressman indicated that he was resigning not just his currently held seat but the one he’d won in the upcoming Congress, too. That means no easy return in January, when the next term begins.
But to fill that seat, DeSantis will have to call a special election. Gaetz, if he ran for the seat again, would have a baked-in advantage, and quite likely Trump’s endorsement once more. But winning back a seat in the House (or just un-resigning) comes with a tradeoff: the Ethics report. Any return to the lower chamber of Congress would likely jump-start the calls from his enemies for the Ethics panel to release its investigatory report, which by all accounts is what Gaetz was trying to avoid from the get-go.
Then there’s the Senate. With Marco Rubio likely headed to the State Department, a vacancy is emerging in Florida’s US Senate delegation. If Gaetz is looking for the opportunity to make a name for himself in the upper chamber, where competition for the camera lens is comparatively lower, this will be his last chance to do so for the next six years. Florida’s other senator, Rick Scott, was just re-elected in November.
In the coming days, DeSantis will appoint a replacement to serve in Rubio’s stead, and state officials will call a special election for that seat, too. And here’s where that door has probably already shut for Gaetz: a DeSantis ally indicated to a conservative news outlet this week that Gaetz is not on the list for an appointment, period. Needless to say, DeSantis and Gaetz have never been the best of friends.
Whoever does get the governor’s blessing will likely go on to pick up his and the president-elect’s endorsement in the immediate wake of the appointment, and will use that political strength in the special election to represent the seat for the remainder of Rubio’s term. With Gaetz apparently iced out of the process by one of his many GOP rivals, he’d likely have to buck even more Republicans than he’s typically used to in order to claim the seat.
Gaetz could also run for the governorship itself. DeSantis, for all of his popularity in the state, is term-limited. He faces his own political countdown after having lost handily in the 2024 GOP presidential primary and cultivating few (current) national prospects of his own. The governor’s race is right around the corner, in 2026. Gaetz has long been speculated to be eyeing a bid.
But that brings to mind something that former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told The Independent directly at the RNC in June, where he was publicly confronted by Gaetz himself on the convention floor. McCarthy said in an interview that Gaetz planned to run for governor, but would be blocked from doing so by the House Ethics report.
It was more of a threat than a warning, but it seems prescient all the same. Gaetz’s biggest problem here is largely self-created. For all of his showmanship in the House, he is likely to face well-funded competition for the GOP nomination in 2026 if he runs for governor, including from some of his former colleagues. Representative Byron Donalds, another MAGAworld favorite, is also thought to be eyeing a bid — and was especially cagey about his own national ambitions in an interview with CNN this week.
