David Jolly is running for governor of Florida, promising a campaign that will reach all corners of the state and seek votes from people who don’t traditionally support Democrats.
The central theme of the campaign, which he is launching Thursday, is relieving the strain from the high cost of living in the state. “Affordability, affordability, affordability. That is the No. 1 issue,” he said.
“We are in the midst of a generational affordability crisis that’s impacting every voter and every community, from every walk of life, from every socioeconomic group, and I don’t believe Republicans are offering solutions for that,” Jolly said in an interview during which he described his campaign and platform.
Coalition
Jolly, a Republican turned independent turned Democrat, said there are many voters who want a change after decades of his former party’s control of state government.
“I think there’s a coalition of voters in Florida led by the Democratic Party around Democratic values, but that is broad enough to include independents and many disaffected Republicans. But we lead with Democratic values,” he said.
The description of such a coalition is a recognition of the stark reality facing any Democrat running for any statewide office in 2026, let alone the top job.
Florida hasn’t elected a Democratic governor in more than 30 years. The party hasn’t won a statewide election since 2018. And Florida has 1.2 million more active registered Republican voters than Democrats; less than four years ago, the state had more Democrats than Republicans.
“Math is math. There are not enough Democratic voters in the state of Florida for a Democrat to win the governorship,” he said.
Victory requires a candidate who “goes places where Democrats haven’t gone before. And that means speaking to communities of faith, that means speaking to gun owners, that means speaking to the ag community. That means turning out voters in Broward and in South Florida. But that also means reaching people in North Florida who may not have thought ever before about voting for a Democrat. That’s the coalition.”
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is prevented by term limits from running again, put it more colorfully last month. “If you have a ‘D’ next to your name in this state, you are dead meat because this party is a disaster.”
Key issues
Jolly said the central issue facing Florida is how much it costs to live in the state. Republicans, he said, have given lip service to the growing problem — and their policies and ideology have often exacerbated it.
Top of the list is the high cost of property insurance for homeowners and businesses. Jolly wants the state to create a catastrophe insurance fund to take on the risk of natural disasters.
He said that could cut property insurance rates by 60% for residential, commercial, industrial properties, he said. “That impacts homeowners, that impacts renters, that impacts condo owners. A state catastrophic fund dramatically reduces the cost of access to housing.”
A so-called cat fund could also reduce car insurance premiums by taking on the risk of storm related damages, he said.
Jolly said his solution illustrates his policy-oriented approach, as opposed to an ideology driven way of solving problems.
“Republicans will still call it socialism. I call it more affordable insurance. I’m in a post-ideological part of my career. I don’t care where the answers are on the left-right spectrum. We need bold solutions, big ideas to solve big problems. Republicans won’t do that. They will not solve the insurance crisis,” he said.
Republicans, he said, are “ideologically incapable of accepting the answer: the government steps in where private markets fail. … We do it with roads, we do it with hospitals, we do it with schools. The private market for property insurance has failed in Florida because of our risk of natural disasters — that we’ve probably contributed to because Republicans won’t even allow us to address climate science and climate change.”
On housing affordability, Jolly said, “we need property tax reform” to change the current system so first-time homebuyers aren’t confronted with crushingly high tax bills. DeSantis has proposed a more radical concept, doing away with property taxes, but he hasn’t said how local governments and school districts would come up with the money to pay for police, parks and other services.
Jolly said that education in Florida is now “part of the economic crisis.” The voucher program, which provides tax money to help pay for private and parochial school tuition, has undermined public education. And when parents send their children to non-public schools, they still have to pay heavy costs that aren’t covered by vouchers, he said.
“Their (Republicans’) answer on having abandoned public schools is not going to be to further invest in public schools. It’s going to be chasing private schools where the standards are lower, where they don’t have to take care of kids in need, and where they get to charge whatever they want on top of the vouchers. That’s the Republican position.”
The candidate
Jolly may be best known to Democratic voters as a political commentator for MSNBC, the cable news channel favored by Democrats. Jolly said he left MSNBC and the Shumaker law and lobbying firm and said he would be on the campaign trail full time.
Jolly, 52, is a fifth-generation Floridian. As a Republican member of Congress from Pinellas County from March 2014 to January 2017, he was more in the mold of centrist Republicans exemplified by the late President George H.W. Bush and unlike adherents of President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement who dominate the party today.
In December 2015, Jolly called on Trump to drop out of his first presidential race. He lost his bid for reelection in 2016. In 2018 he left the Republican Party and registered as a no party affiliation/independent voter.
In April, as he was making more public moves toward running for governor, he registered as a Democrat.
“I am proud to be a Democrat because I believe it’s the party that represents an economy for all people, a government that actually works, that serves seniors, its veterans, and can provide for education, public education, and a party that brings the government the ability to embrace everybody and lift everybody up regardless of where you were born, how you got here, who you love, or who you worship,” he said. “Those are the core Democratic values.”
In a statement Monday ahead of Jolly’s announcement, the state Republican Party said Florida voters have “zero appetite for MSNBC talking points” and he “stands against everything Floridians believe in.”
State Republican Chair Evan Power said in the statement that, “Floridians won’t trust a slick opportunist who simply can’t be trusted. Jolly has no platform, no base, and no chance in Florida.”
Strategy
Many Democrats are fired up in opposition to Trump. But Jolly said focusing on Trump in Florida —the state the president has adopted as his home, where he has many supporters, and has won with increasing margins — isn’t a path to victory in the governor’s race.
Instead he plans to focus on issues that are affecting Floridians’ lives, and the opportunity for change that comes from an open governor’s seat with no incumbent.
“We’re running against the direction of the state and offering change. It is a governorship, not a federal race. This race is not about Donald Trump. It’s not about federal issues. This is about the affordability crisis, a crisis in education,” he said. “It’s about putting an end to the culture wars. It is about responsibly running the state. It’s about saying we should reform property taxes. But let’s use math and actually do it in a way that ensures we continue to provide for safe communities and good schools.”
As models he cited Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and former Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana as Democrats who can win in Republican states.
“We’re going to test if enough people in Florida want change,” he said. “I want to offer a different path, and that’s one of the reasons I feel very, very good about next November.”
Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.