Jolly tests Florida’s status as conservative stronghold in governor’s race against Donalds

Florida voters will choose Tuesday between Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly in a governor’s race that is testing the endurance of the state’s conservative shift in recent years.

A Democrat hasn’t won the Florida governor’s race since Lawton Chiles in 1994. But Jolly, a former Republican congressman from Tampa, switched parties and campaigned as a centrist ready to move the state beyond years of fierce culture wars stoked by outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Donalds, a congressman from southwest Florida who won the Republican nomination with President Donald Trump’s backing, has sought to define Jolly as an out-of-touch liberal. He would be Florida’s first Black governor and has throughout the campaign reached out to Black voters who have overwhelmingly backed Democrats.

The results will signal whether Trump’s unpopularity, which has weighed down Republicans across the U.S., will extend into his adopted home state. Democrats head into the election heartened by a string of special election wins over the past year from Miami to Trump’s backyard in Palm Beach.

Beyond the national political environment, the race has centered on issues including high prices and the cost of homeowners insurance, a particularly salient issue in a state with a history of being ravaged by hurricanes.

Florida spent a generation as America’s prized political battleground, where the interests of big cities, agricultural towns, freshly arrived retirees and diverse Latino communities collided in elections often decided by fractions of a percentage point.

That reputation began to fade under DeSantis, who won his first race in 2018 by less than half a percentage point. But once he was in office, he leaned into debates over race and gender — signing, for instance, legislation often labeled by critics as “ Don’t Say Gay ” that bars instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through the third grade. By the time he ran for reelection in 2022, DeSantis won in a nearly 20-percentage-point landslide that left the state’s Democrats in shambles.

Jolly faces steep hurdles in his effort to lead the party’s rebound. Republicans have a roughly 1.5 million voter registration advantage, and Donalds has dominated Jolly in fundraising.

Seeking to overcome those challenges, Jolly has campaigned in Florida’s Democratic strongholds, like Broward County, along with traditionally Republican parts of central Florida and the Panhandle.

Donalds has maintained a steady confidence throughout the campaign. He balanced his support for Trump, including appearing with him at a recent rally, with efforts to create some distance, such as minimizing references to the president on his website.

Regardless of who wins the governor’s race, they will almost certainly have to work with a legislature where Republicans will hold majorities. If Jolly proves competitive, Democrats have hoped they could at least break the GOP’s supermajority in the legislature, giving them greater leverage in the crafting of bills.