A campaign memo says the candidate can bring independents and ‘disaffected Republicans’ to his side.
Do off-year elections in New Jersey, New York and Virginia that saw Democrats win multiple races up and down the ballot have any predictive value regarding next year’s race for Florida Governor?
Democratic candidate David Jolly believes so.
In a memo sent out as the results of those out-of-state races became clear, the former Republican Congressman’s campaign expressed optimism that voters here are also ready to deviate from the GOP. He said voters will embrace his alternative to “losing formula” campaigns “built around consultants instead of communities, focused on fundraisers and corporate boardrooms instead of front porches and town halls.”
“As Democrats across the country are celebrating victories this week by focusing on affordability and the everyday struggles of working families, Floridians are demanding that same kind of leadership. Leadership rooted not in partisan division, but in practical solutions that make life better for everyone,” the campaign said in a memo to “interested parties.”
Jolly’s camp said it’s important to “unite the Democratic Party while expanding the tent to include independents and disaffected Republicans.”
“Who has the credibility and message to defeat Republican extremism — not with partisan rhetoric, but with practical ideas that connect across political lines?”
The Jolly memo takes a shot at previous Democratic efforts as well, in which candidates in statewide races like Charlie Crist, Val Demings and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell were “dedicated” and “gave it everything they had, yet still came up short” by double digits.
The campaign then suggests the other major Democrat in the race, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings, can’t win.
“Which candidate — Mayor Jerry Demings or David Jolly — is capable of breaking that losing pattern, doing things differently and performing better than the party’s past standard-bearers? Who can close that gap and finally win again?”
The Jolly camp goes on to brand his campaign as an alternative to failed strategies of the past.
“The path to victory in 2026 runs through affordability, authenticity, and unity — not division, partisan ideology and culture wars, or recycling and repeating the same Democratic statewide campaign mistakes of the past,” the memo says. “David Jolly is running that campaign, and it’s working.”
Though it’s still early in the cycle, Jolly has spent some of his money on polling that bolsters his narrative. An internal survey circulated by his campaign shows that head-to-head contests between Jolly and either U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds or former House Speaker Paul Renner are coin flips.
If the race is that close, it means Republicans are crossing over to vote for a Democrat, given the GOP has nearly 1.4 million more registered voters than the opposition party.
It also represents a deviation from 2022, when Gov. Ron DeSantis defeated another Republican convert to the Democrats, Crist, by nearly 20 percentage points.
Resources for Jolly present a problem, particularly given Republicans’ strong efforts. While Jolly has raised roughly $2 million, Donalds has raised at least $31.5 million in total, and Renner has raised $3.7 million over just 35 days.
Demings’ numbers likely won’t be known until early next year.