David Jolly is a fifth-generation Floridian, former member of Congress, attorney, and longtime government reform advocate running for Governor of Florida.
The son of a minister, David has lived throughout Florida—from Clearwater and Pasco County to Miami and Pensacola—and today is raising his family with his wife, Laura, in Pinellas County. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Emory University and his law degree from George Mason University before building a career spanning law, public service, and media.
David represented the St. Petersburg area in Congress, where he developed a reputation for working across party lines. Although elected as a Republican, he supported bipartisan efforts on campaign-finance reform, gun-violence prevention, environmental protection, and other issues. He later left the Republican Party, spent several years as an independent working on democracy and political reform, and ultimately joined the Democratic Party.
That political journey has shaped the kind of campaign David is running for governor: one focused on solving problems rather than fighting ideological battles.
His priorities include:
- dramatically reducing Florida’s property-insurance burden and making housing more affordable
- expanding access to affordable healthcare and Medicaid
- investing in neighborhood public schools and increasing teacher pay
- protecting reproductive freedom
- strengthening ethics and campaign-finance laws
- reducing gun violence while respecting responsible gun ownership
- protecting Florida’s beaches, waterways, state parks, and ocean economy
- expanding clean energy and climate resiliency
- strengthening services for Florida veterans
- building an economy that creates greater opportunity and financial security for working families
David’s campaign is particularly focused on Florida’s affordability crisis. His property-insurance proposal would create a state catastrophic fund to remove natural-disaster risk from the private insurance market, which his campaign argues could substantially reduce insurance costs for Florida families.
He has also made political reform a central part of his candidacy, arguing for stronger ethics rules, greater campaign-finance transparency, respect for home rule, and a state government more accountable to Floridians rather than political or corporate interests.
After years of increasingly divisive politics in Tallahassee, David is running on a different vision: make Florida more affordable, protect individual freedoms, strengthen public institutions, and build a state government willing to work across political lines to solve problems.
Let's be honest. The greatest threat to our country today is the rise of authoritarianism, not socialism.
Let's commit to a little honesty in our politics, focus on economic growth for the most number of people, and restore a little trust in each other along the way.
- David Jolly