Former Rep. David Jolly has officially filed to run for governor of Florida in a race that still favors Republicans but remains wide open in the Democratic primary.
Winning as a Democrat will be a long shot. Jolly, a former GOP, one-term representative from Pinellas County near Tampa, enters the race at a time when Florida has shifted decidedly right after years of topping the list of swing states.
Making Jolly’s candidacy especially difficult is that — even this early in the game — the governor’s race is expected to be a three-way battle with both Republican and independent candidates. Jolly will additionally have to fend off perceptions that he’s similar to Democrat Charlie Crist, another ex-Republican and independent who Gov. Ron DeSantis crushed in 2022.
But he could also have a clear path to the nomination. So far, no Democrat aside from Jolly is clamoring to replace term-limited DeSantis. Other Democrats who openly expressed interest in running for governor a year ago have since petered out, underscoring just how dismal the political landscape is for Democrats after Trump won Florida by 13 points in 2024.
Former Democratic state Sen. Jason Pizzo has also said he wants to run for governor. But he ended his time as leader of his chamber a month ago while declaring the party “dead” in a dramatic exit at the Capitol in Tallahassee. He now plans to mount a run as an independent, a move numerous Democrats say will only serve as a spoiler to hand the race to Republicans.
But Jolly is more optimistic about Democrats’ chances, especially if the 2026 cycle is poised to be what he calls a “change election.” His announcement Thursday came roughly five weeks after he revealed he was switching his no-party affiliation to Democrat and started a state political committee. He first expressed public interest in running in March, about a month after President Donald Trump endorsed Republican Rep. Byron Donalds for governor.
Jolly has since traveled the state to do more than a dozen town halls and told POLITICO in an interview he would be foregoing a formal campaign kickoff event in favor of continuing the listening tour.
“They're making me a stronger, smarter advocate for change, and we're just going to keep doing that,” he said. “This is a campaign that’s going to look and feel different on the inside and out.”
He said Florida’s affordability crisis was his reason for running and blamed Republicans in Tallahassee for the fact that so many people at his town halls say they’re anxious about how they’ll afford to live in Florida. Democrats have an opportunity to show they’ll fight for an economy that helps people, he said, predicting that Donalds or any other Republican would “have a hard time defending the affordability crisis.”
“Republicans have created it,” he said. “They're not doing anything about it, and we will. And that message in every corner of the state, in every conversation, is what resonates.”
If elected governor, Jolly plans to push to expand Medicaid, a government health coverage program, to low-income Floridians and to “dramatically reinvest” in public education. He also said he would push to reverse laws signed by DeSantis that shield the governor’s travel and visitors’ log from the public.
One area where he does agree with DeSantis is that property tax laws need reform, though he dismissed the all-out tax repeal the governor is calling for, which would apply only to people’s primary homes, saying the math still has to work to pay for safety and education services. He’d want to study it and bring in experts, he said.
Jolly declined to share how much he has fundraised up to this point, but his committee will soon have to regularly publish donations publicly under state law. It’s possible that he’ll be able to tap into a national network of donors given that he frequently appeared on cable television, including formerly contributing regularly to MSNBC.
In Florida, candidates are allowed to be directly involved in the operation and decision-making of political committees — which isn’t the case for federal campaign committees.
Jolly already has plans for the dollars that do come in, saying he thought it was up to statewide candidates like himself to “bear responsibility for raising resources and deploying them towards voter registration.” The party is currently facing a 1.3 million active voter deficit compared with Republicans — one Democrats argue has been disproportionately affected by marking voters as inactive if they’ve abstained from voting in the last two election cycles.
Donalds remains the only major candidate who has filed to run on the Republican side and has already raised $12 million into the first month of his campaign, though Florida first lady Casey DeSantis is also considering a bid. Donalds also has put together a team of officials who successfully helped Trump take back the White House, including pollster Tony Fabrizio and senior adviser Danielle Alvarez.
In the coming months, Jolly plans to go to towns where “Democrats haven’t gone before,” including talking to agriculture communities about how they’re being affected by Florida’s strict immigration laws and to faith communities “to talk about how Republican politicians have perverted policy issues around issues of faith and how I believe Democratic values better reflect the teachings of faith.”
One of the biggest doubts Jolly will face is to make the case that he’ll have a different outcome from Crist, the same politician who defeated him in his 2016 House race. Jolly admits he has changed his positions on issues like abortion, climate change and firearms, and said he doesn’t try to argue — like Crist — that the party changed, but said he has changed his mind and thinks a lot of other voters have, too.
His goal, he said, would be to create a wide coalition of supporters that appeal to independents and some Republicans because “there are not enough Democratic votes to win the governorship.”
“We need a campaign, a candidate and a party that can win hearts and minds back,” he said. “And that's our job.”
from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/B1NnAfm
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment