North Lauderdale, Florida
Jean Philippeaux could barely hide the urgency in his voice as he described to David Jolly a television ad that for weeks has hammered Florida’s Democratic nominee for governor.
The ad claims Jolly supports a “hurricane tax.” Jolly told Philippeaux and a room full of other Haitian American leaders and voters in South Florida on Thursday that it was patently false.
Philippeaux wanted more than an explanation. “When are you going to respond to what you call lies about you?”
A counter punch would arrive on the airwaves imminently, Jolly assured Philippeaux. But he then acknowledged the larger problem hanging over his increasingly competitive race against Republican Rep. Byron Donalds.
“We’re not going to be able to scale up the way he has,” Jolly said. “It’s a function of money. He has a lot of money.”
The exchange captured a reality tempering the surging optimism of Florida Democrats. They believe — and many Republicans concede — that Jolly is within striking distance of Donalds, a remarkable development in a state the party had largely written off after a decade of GOP gains. Angie Nixon, the democratic socialist nominated to face Republican Sen. Ashley Moody, has also mounted a spirited challenge that has energized the party’s base. Making Florida competitive again would carry implications for Democrats well beyond this year’s races.
But the money has not followed the enthusiasm.
Donalds and an aligned political committee had raised more than $134 million as of September 25, dwarfing Jolly’s $16.6 million., campaign finance reports show. The various arms of the Democratic Party have largely remained on the sidelines in both statewide contests. Liberal donors have so far skipped the state, too.
As it is, Jolly and Democrats had purchased just $3 million of airtime in Florida as of Thursday, according to the campaign tracking firm AdImpact. That is less than the Democratic candidates have spent on TV ads in all but a handful of governor races, including Colorado, Massachusetts and New York — solidly blue states where victory is overwhelmingly expected. Nixon has faced financial disadvantages as well.
“I believe that organized people will beat big money any day, but right now we’re going against gigantic money,” Nixon told members of a Black church in Fort Lauderdale on Thursday as she asked the congregation to part with “a little bit of treasure.”
The reluctance to invest in Florida, a notoriously expensive state for campaigns, is illustrative of the broader financial constraints that Democrats face as they try to capitalize on a favorable political environment with far less money than President Donald Trump and his party. With limited resources, Democrats have prioritized other battlegrounds, including a costly fight over a Texas Senate seat that has drawn intense interest from donors large and small.
Those decisions also reflect a calculation that once-purple Florida has turned a shade of red that might not flip to blue even in a strong Democratic year. History lends credence to that caution: Floridians haven’t elected a Democratic governor in 30 years.
“If you go to the grocery store with only $100 to buy groceries for the week, are you gonna buy the apple pie?” said John Morgan, an Orlando personal injury lawyer and Democratic megadonor. “No, you’re going to say, ‘let’s get the milk, let’s get the meat, let’s get the vegetables.’ There might not be enough money for dessert.”
“Florida is dessert,” he added. “Texas is meat.”
2028 and beyond
Jolly has publicly and privately urged Democratic officials to give the state another look. He expected a tightening race would draw them back in, he said, and perhaps even entice the growing list of Democratic presidential hopefuls to pitch in.
So far, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker has offered the most tangible assistance. Pritzker campaigned with Jolly earlier this year and gave his political committee $50,000 last month. Still, for the billionaire heir to the Hyatt Hotel empire that contribution amounted to a fraction of the $65 million he has funneled into his own reelection, a race he’s expected to win handily. Former Congressman and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, another potential 2028 contender, will campaign with Jolly next week.
“I had long thought that all these presidential candidates would decide to come help in Florida,” Jolly said, “If for nothing else, if they became the champion of David Jolly and David Jolly wins, David Jolly’s going to remember they helped. I don’t mean that in a transactional way. It’s just the enlightened self-interest of someone looking to run for president.”
“If Florida’s voters demonstrate we’re purple again and elect a Democratic governor, every presidential candidate, including Republicans, now have to be here for the next two years,” he added.
In a statement, Democratic Governors Association spokesman Kevin Donohue said the organization is “ready to capitalize on any opportunity to make a real difference in this race in the final stretch” but stopped short of committing real dollars.
Progressive Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has pledged $250,000 to Nixon and will hold a rally with her later this month. But top Senate Democrats remain focused on other contests they view as more winnable, one person familiar with the discussions said.
Steve Schale, the veteran Democratic strategist behind President Barack Obama’s successful Florida campaigns, called his party’s approach short-sighted. Failing to invest in Florida this November makes it harder for Democrats to compete there in the 2028 presidential race, he said, and potentially more costly still after the 2030 census is expected to reshape the party’s path to 270 electoral college votes.
“We have to win other states and they’re all in the South,” Schale said. “And we’ve had success in Florida more often than anywhere else in the Sun Belt.”
“That’s where showing signs of life this cycle is important,” he added.
Eight years ago, a Democratic retreat from Florida would have seemed implausible.
The party lost races for governor and Senate in 2018, but only by the narrowest of margins. The defeats, after spending tens of millions of dollars, were bruising. Still, Democrats vowed to regroup.
Instead, the losses compounded. Four years later, DeSantis won re-election by 19 points, a rout that crystallized Florida’s transformation from perennial battleground to Republican stronghold. By the 2024 presidential election, national Democrats had all but abandoned the state and Trump won it by 13.
Trump’s return to Washington, however, has given Florida Democrats reason to reconsider how far out of reach the state really is.
Miami elected a Democratic mayor in December for the first time in three decades. In August, Democrats picked up seats on the school board in Sarasota County, booting one of the co-founders of the conservative group Mom’s for Liberty. The party has also won a handful of special elections for GOP-leaning legislative seats, including the state House district that includes Mar-a-Lago.
The same forces shaping the midterms nationally are present in Florida: an unpopular Republican president and persistent anxiety over the cost of living. Hispanic voters, meanwhile, are showing signs of moving away from Trump, a potentially consequential shift in a state where they make up a substantial share of the electorate. And, Florida’s long-troubled property insurance market has added another source of economic frustration for voters and more headwinds for the Republicans overseeing the crisis.
Data centers have emerged as another flashpoint. Donalds, once an enthusiastic booster of their expansion, now defends local governments that turn them away after facing blowback on the issue during his primary.
Republicans aren’t panicking yet, one GOP fundraiser in Florida told CNN, but they are getting nervous. Donalds did little to ease those concerns in August, when he failed to eclipse 50 percent of the vote in the Republican primary despite carrying Trump’s unequivocal support. Nor did DeSantis help by withholding his endorsement of Donalds until after the primary, and the outgoing governor has done little in recent weeks to boost the Republican hoping to succeed him.
Trump has also lately devoted more attention to a race Republicans once expected to win comfortably. Last month, he gave Donalds a speaking slot at his midterm convention in Dallas, which the president said were reserved for candidates “in tight races.” The White House sent Vice President JD Vance to rally Republicans in Central Florida on Thursday and Trump has announced plans to campaign with Donalds as well.
Donalds said he welcomed Trump’s visit to Florida and rejected the suggestion that it reflected Republican concerns about the race.
“The president has always been active politically,” Donalds told CNN after speaking to Republicans in Okaloosa County, one of several Panhandle counties he didn’t carry in August. “He’s not at all one of these people who just kind of sits on the sidelines and just throws out ads and watch stuff happen. He likes to fully engage. We’re very grateful that the president is choosing to come to Florida.”
Donalds said he is polling behind Trump two years ago and DeSantis four years ago because he is not as well known. He has campaigned aggressively across the state in recent weeks to raise his profile and convince voters he’s attuned to their affordability concerns, even as Trump continues to dismiss them as a Democratic political attack on his economic record.
“It’s about unifying our party while staying focused on the kitchen table issues that impact all Floridians,” Donalds said.
Some Republicans remain uncertain whether Donalds can hold together the coalition that elected DeSantis and Trump. One of Donalds’ primary opponents, James Fishback, continues to criticize the Republican nominee, on social media and in public appearances.
“There’s a question of whether (Donalds) is able to unite Republicans,” the GOP fundraiser said, who asked not to be named to speak freely about his party’s nominee. “And if there’s a candidate who can pull away those voters, it’s Jolly.”
Jolly represented the Tampa Bay area in Congress as a Republican until he lost his seat in 2016. He later became a cable-news mainstay and regular Trump critic and spent years considering a return to politics through a third-party bid. In April 2025, he registered as a Democrat and announced a campaign for governor.
It’s a path Florida Democrats have traveled before.
Charlie Crist, a former Republican governor, switched parties and unsuccessfully sought his old job in 2014. Democrats nominated him again in 2022, only to see him lose overwhelmingly to DeSantis. Between those campaigns, Crist defeated Jolly in that 2016 House race.
Democrats hope Jolly’s background will appeal not only to moderates but also to Republicans disenchanted by Trump — a sizable share of which he would need to win in a state where GOP voters outnumber Democrats by 1.6 million. Meanwhile, Jolly’s campaign is leaning on Nixon, who is Black and has spent years organizing in Jacksonville, to bring out new Democrats or those who haven’t voted in recent elections in that key region of the state.
Donalds and his allies have seized on Jolly’s political evolution, describing him as opportunistic, disingenuous and a Crist retread. Republican Party of Florida Chairman Evan Power has called Jolly “Temu Charlie,” meaning his candidacy is an off-brand version of Crist’s 2022 run.
Jolly has shrugged off the comparisons and insists voters are attracted to his pragmatism.
“People got to watch my journey over 10 years,” Jolly said. “I don’t think the problem in politics are people who change, it’s people who won’t change. And change is part of the strength of our campaign.”
Morgan said the Crist comparison only makes it harder to sway snakebitten donors that this time Florida really is different.
“They’ve heard it so many times that (Florida is in play), the question becomes, ‘Are they just crying wolf again,’” said Morgan, whose frustrations with Democrats have led him to tease the creation of a third party.
Late last month, Jolly launched a salvo at his own party for not investing in his race, suggesting they would share blame if he came up short.
But days later, as he emerged from a donor meeting at a Coral Gables steakhouse and stepped into a black SUV with his wife Laura, Jolly sounded more upbeat. A check for $1 million had arrived that morning.
“I do think people are now starting to come in,” he said. “And I’m optimistic we’ll continue to see more.”
He still has an uphill climb. As of mid-September, Jolly’s political committee had received 18 donations of six figures or more. Donalds’ committee reported more than 300.
Jolly said he has enough money to share his message on television through Election Day. But he doesn’t have the funds to separately target Black voters, reach disaffected Republicans or sustain attacks against Donalds.
“I worry about an environment where he skates through with no scrutiny,” Jolly said. “But we can only control what we can control.”
Yet, Jolly has passed on the clearest opportunity to scrutinize Donalds directly: debating him. He said he won’t participate in any debates because “it’s just going to further divide us as a state and in our politics to have two candidates up there yelling at each other and fighting.” The decision has puzzled some Democrats and stunned Donalds’ camp.
On Friday, though, Jolly finally answered one of Donald’s’ claims in the airwaves. His new ad rebutted the suggestion Jolly supports a “hurricane tax” and called Donalds a “liar.”
Philippeaux, at the North Lauderdale event, worried it’s not enough.
“I’ve been watching,” he said. “I think he’s got to step it up.”
