David Jolly was a Republican member of Congress for a couple of terms, serving his Tampa-area constituents before losing a re-election bid in 2016, narrowly coming up short against Charlie Crist — a Republican-turned-Democrat who ended up running for governor.
Nearly a decade later, an eerily similar set of circumstances are unfolding: Jolly, like Crist, left the Republican Party. Jolly, like Crist, became a Democrat. And Jolly, like Crist, is now running for governor under his new party banner. NBC News reported:
Democrats face a huge uphill climb in 2026 to retake Florida’s governorship for the first time in more than two decades, but David Jolly says he is up to the challenge. Jolly, a former Republican congressman who left the party in large part because of his opposition to President Donald Trump, is announcing Thursday that he is running for governor.
Though Election Day 2026 is still more than a year away, Jolly is now the first and only high-profile candidate to launch a Democratic statewide bid, though there are other potential candidates who’ve expressed an interest in the race.
(Disclosure: Jolly is a former MSNBC political contributor, who’s made frequent on-air and online appearances.)
By any fair measure, no matter who wins the Democratic nomination in 2026, whether it’s the former congressman or not, the gubernatorial race is likely to be challenging. While Florida used to be seen as the nation’s largest and most competitive battleground, the Sunshine State has moved sharply to the right in recent years, solidifying its reputation as a red state, despite having backed Barack Obama’s presidential candidacy twice in 2008 and 2012.
Indeed, Floridians haven’t elected a Democratic governor in more than three decades, though the 2018 race was extraordinarily close.
But as the contest unfolds, it’s also worth pausing to note some of the broader political shifts underway. The Democratic Party has, to be sure, lost some notable figures in recent months. In Florida, for example, the party’s state Senate leader abandoned Democrats in April, and in Kentucky and Texas, other longtime Democratic officials recently became Republicans. Even Karine Jean Pierre, Joe Biden’s former White House press secretary, announced this week that she’s also left the party, a move that coincided with the release of her new book. But the door isn’t swinging entirely in one direction. Illinois’ Joe Walsh, for example, was elected to Congress in 2010 as a Tea Party Republican, and this week, the former lawmaker, disgusted with the direction of the Trump-era GOP, became a Democrat. Jolly has followed a similar path. In other words, even as Democrats lose some figures, it’s gaining others — most notably some former Republicans looking for a far less radical new home.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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