Ex- GOP Congressman David Jolly Announces Run For Florida Governor, As A Dem

The first major candidate to announce a run for the Democratic nomination for Florida governor is a former Republican member of Congress who could possibly roll through the primary without a serious challenge.

David Jolly, who served three years in the House representing a Tampa Bay district and is likely best known now as an MSNBC contributor, on Thursday announced his bid to become the first Democrat in Tallahassee’s governor’s mansion since Buddy MacKay held the job for three weeks finishing out the term of Lawton Chiles, who died in late 1998.

“Something is happening in Florida,” Jolly told HuffPost, describing the town-hall style meetings he has held around the state, including in solidly Republican areas, over the past several months. “We’ve got a shot in this governor’s race.”

MacKay, who had been Chiles’ lieutenant governor, lost to Republican Jeb Bush in November 1998, and a Republican has held Florida’s governorship ever since.

The closest Democrats have come to winning over that stretch was 2018, when Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum came within 32,000 votes of defeating then-congressman Ron DeSantis. DeSantis won reelection, however, by 19 points over Charlie Crist, another Republican-turned-Democrat.

Jolly said he and Crist came to the Democratic Party quite differently. While Crist has said that the Republican Party left him by moving away from his values, Jolly said he over the years changed his views on issues ranging from gun control to abortion. He left the Republican Party in 2018, after its takeover by President Donald Trump, but was an independent for seven years before formally registering as a Democrat in late April.

“I test the theory in politics: Is it OK to change your mind?” he said. “I think I reflect where a lot of voters are.”

Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party and the last Democrat to serve on the elected Cabinet as agriculture commissioner, said that it was conceivable that no well-known Democrat will enter the race between now and the qualifying deadline next year.

Whether that happens or not, though, Jolly has his work cut out for him to persuade hardcore Democrats in Florida that he truly is one of them. “He will need validators from the progressive community…. There is some skepticism in the Black community,” said Fried, who herself ran for governor in 2022 but lost the primary to Crist.

She added, though, that Jolly has impressed her thus far with his willingness to go everywhere and to talk to everyone. “He is showing up,” she said.

Crist held two elected statewide positions before running for governor as a Republican in 2006. He decided to run for U.S. Senate in 2010, but was on course to losing that primary to Marco Rubio, leading him to leave the GOP and run as an independent. Rubio ended up winning the Senate seat and Crist two years later became a Democrat.

He ran for governor again in 2014 against then-incumbent Rick Scott and came within 1 percentage point of winning. From there, he ran for Congress against Jolly in 2016, beating him and serving three terms before leaving to run for governor again in 2022 against DeSantis, getting crushed this time.

Fried said Jolly probably has a better chance at winning than Crist did, particularly if the mood of the electorate is similar to what it was in 2018, when Trump had energized Democrats everywhere including Florida. “People are willing to give him a shot,” she said of Jolly.

Florida is a tough and expensive place to run for statewide office, with 11 different television markets across a thousand miles and two time zones. To win, Jolly or any Democrat would need tens of millions of dollars or more to compete, at a time when many donors may be skeptical of a state that DeSantis won in a landslide in 2022 and Trump won easily in 2024.

Florida’s term limits disallow another four years for DeSantis, although his wife, Casey, is considering a run while GOP House member and outspoken Trump ally Byron Donalds announced his candidacy in February.

Jolly, though, said that Democrats nationally understand the importance of Florida in the elections to come given that the 2030 Census will likely give Florida and Texas four more House districts between them and thus a near-lock on the Electoral College unless Democrats can put at least one of them in play.

“If we win the governor’s race in ’26, the road to the White House runs through Florida in 2028,” he said.

Republicans, even anti-Trump ones who would love to see Jolly win, say that is a sizeable “if.”

“I think his only path even to the Democratic nomination is a large and steady influx of soft money and outside support,” said one Republican consultant who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He will need to catch lightning in a bottle to get the small-donor national network engaged to help him, and they won’t be as likely to give to a very recent Democrat.”

Mac Stipanovich, a decadeslong Republican who left the party after Trump’s rise, agreed that Jolly faces a steep hill. “The fundamentals, and, therefore, the odds, are against him. He will need to run a well-funded, nearly error-free campaign and be lucky to boot, catching some breaks beyond his control,” he said.