The primaries for Florida’s 2026 gubernatorial election are still a year away. But some Florida Democratic Party officials are already attempting to prevent a primary in the first place. Who is the party anointing as their pick for Florida governor in 2026? Surprise, it’s another former Republican.
David Jolly, a former Republican congressman who changed party affiliations in early 2025, has risen in the ranks of key Democratic Party figureheads to serve as the latest Democratic gubernatorial candidate.
Anna Hochkammer, executive director of Florida-based Women’s Freedom Coalition, published an op-ed in the Miami Herald in July deriding Florida Democrats’ eagerness to support the former congressman. She points out during Jolly’s time in office, he voted for and sometimes sponsored several pieces of anti-abortion legislation. A spokesperson for the then-representative even told the Tampa Bay Times in 2015 that “David Jolly is pro-life and believes that life begins at conception,” going on to state, “Jolly authored the bill to defund Planned Parenthood.” Despite his apparent ideological switch since entering the gubernatorial primary, Hochkammer quotes Jolly himself in saying that “his values haven’t changed.”
After Hochkammer published her article, many Democrats jumped to Jolly’s defense. Politico reported a “torrent of support” and financial contributions among key establishment Democrats to Jolly’s campaign in the two weeks following its publication.
Such quick and loud approval for Jolly’s campaign exemplifies a larger problem within the party, hinted at by Hochkammer’s article. The Florida Democrats are still dominated by their moderate faction, which has done nothing but focus its efforts on chasing its heyday from the 2000s. Such establishment Democrats are exemplified by Politico’s list of Jolly supporters, among whom include former Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham, both of whom are party stalwarts from years past.
These Democrats are disconnected with the growing youth voter base because they assume we, along with previous generations, will fall in line and vote for whatever candidate they plucked out of Y2K obscurity. Instead of making efforts to court younger voters, or really any new voters, they go back to their “vote blue no matter who” echo chamber and search for new ways to push their out-of-touch politics. Any dissenters are brushed off as troublemakers and, in the case of Hochkammer, falsely accused of building political clout.
Jolly is a perfect example of this disconnection. He has not held elected office since 2017, before most Gen Z individuals were able to vote, and has made no effort to connect with them seriously. Furthermore, Jolly’s gubernatorial campaign website reads as though it came from some templated Democratic database with the wording changed to fit a Floridian race.
And it’s not just abortion policies he’s skimped on. Affordability and the cost-of-living crisis get nothing more than a four-sentence mention on his issues page. Immigration, an issue hammered into the ground by President Donald Trump and outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis, has no mention on Jolly’s platform.
The rise of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination by the incumbent governor and state legislature is also absent on his website, even though DeSantis’s war on queer lives threatens both our cultural and economic advantages in Florida. How he expects to win the gubernatorial race as a Democrat in a rapidly red-leaning state with nothing more than vague promises and disengagement with Florida issues, I have no idea.
What is clear is this: Florida Democrats need to wake up.
Forcing passively Republican candidates down our throats in the name of moderation and bipartisanship is not going to win us the gubernatorial race in 2026. Republicans reclaimed Florida from the Obama-era coalition by providing a bold platform that addressed the most prominent concerns of Floridians. It’s time the Florida Democratic Party does the same.
Stop running away from your own shadow and start envisioning a brighter future for the Sunshine State — this time, with real Democrats leading through real solutions.
Lucas Nadeau is a 20-year-old UF political science junior
