The choice; Donalds v. Jolly

Well, as voters head to the polls for the Florida governor's race, they're presented with a striking choice. The Democratic nominee used to be a Republican, and the Republican nominee grew up a Democrat. But the story of David Jolly and Byron Donalds is much more than a tale of party switching. It's the story of how the American political system changed over the past decade, told through two men who navigated that change in very different ways. I'm excited to have the full endorsement of President Trump. Representative Donald's, he's got a tremendous future ahead of him. Praised by Trump. I struggle today with how Republican evangelicals have embraced Donald Trump after Access Hollywood and everything else he's done, and I say that as a Christian. One was a Republican insider who broke with his party, spent years as an independent, and eventually became a Democrat. Washington, watch out. Things are going to change. The other was a political outsider who overcame troubles as a young man to rise to political stardom. In the very party his opponent left behind. A strong, Trump-supporting, gun-owning, liberty-loving, pro-life, politically incorrect black man. Let's start with the Democrat, David Jolly, the son of a Baptist minister. He was rooted in the Republican establishment. He learned the mechanics of Washington from the inside out as the general counsel and senior aide to longtime Florida Congressman Bill Young. Working alongside the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Jolly learned how to bring federal money back to the Tampa Bay area. And he later put that experience to work as a lobbyist. I believe in the House. I believe Congress can work. And when Young died, Jolly ran for his mentor's seat in a 2014 special election and won. And even though he was trailing by as many as six points with a week to go, the Republican, not very well known, Dave Jolly. Has defeated Alex Sink, known, just ran for statewide office, 49% to 47%. But the Washington he returned to as a congressman was changing. He found a deeply gridlocked chamber, and he used a theatrical tactic to try to force action. During the 2016 Zika virus outbreak, frustrated by delays in federal funding, Jolly took a jar of mosquitoes to the House floor. Can you imagine, colleagues, the fear and anxiety in this chamber if these hundred mosquitoes were outside this jar, not inside this jar? This is the fear of Floridians right here. But challenging Washington over policy was one thing. Taking on his own party's money machine was another. And your job, new member of Congress, is to raise $18,000 a day. Your first responsibility is to make sure you hit $18,000 a day. Facing pressure from GOP leadership to spend hours a day raising campaign money, Jolly took his criticism of his own party's fundraising machine to 60 Minutes. It is a cult-like boiler room on Capitol Hill where sitting members of Congress, frankly, I believe, are compromising the dignity of the office they hold by sitting in these sweatshop phone booths, calling people, asking them for money. He introduced the STOP Act to prohibit members of Congress from personally soliciting campaign contributions. Then I pulled the curtain back a little bit on what I believe is a first-rate scandal of today's political generation, which is fundraising is more important than politics. Well, the move alienated him from Republican leadership and the National Party pulled back financial support for his reelection. And around that same time, Jolly was also breaking with Trump as the GOP became the party of Trump. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call on Donald Trump to withdraw. His candidacy for the White House. He was one of Trump's early and strong Republican critics, calling him a liar, questioning his intellect, and saying Trump was not fit to serve, among other things. See, the Florida congressman said, quote, his brutal bullying bigotry runs contrary to the very principles of our forefathers fought so hard to defend. Redistricted into a Democratic-leaning seat in 2016, Jolly lost his congressional seat to Charlie Crist. Okay, listen, there's a reason that I was abandoned by my own party at the end and attacked by the Democratic Party. It's because I was willing to take on what we all know is wrong. Well, by 2017, Jolly found himself in a political no-man's land. Where does a guy like me go, Craig? A center-right Republican looking for a mainstream agenda in a Trump Republican Party? There is nowhere. Finding himself increasingly at odds with the rise of Donald Trump and the new direction of GOP, Jolly left the Republican Party in 2018. He spent years as an independent before registering as a Democrat in 2025 and mounting his current run for governor. How then could you expect to win a race as a Democrat in a state where there are now many more Republicans than Democrats when they barely or seldom won when there were many more Democrats than Republicans? So I've been out of politics long enough to tell the truth. Your question is exactly right. Let's be honest about how a coalition, not just the candidate, a coalition wins and creates change in November 26. We need the environment to meet us halfway. We are experiencing a national change environment right now. Maybe a generational change election. I want my journey to be a part of the campaign. Critics will reflexively say, he changed his mind. I did. I test that question in politics. Is it OK to change your mind? And you know what? The answer is yes, because most voters have. You know who's changed the most? Republicans. Republicans. Republicans who used to be for less government. For lower taxes, for fiscal responsibility, now we're defending more deficits and more debt. Republicans in Tallahassee are defending walking into your doctor's offices and your classrooms and your bedrooms. They've changed. They've certainly changed. So let them defend their change, and I'll defend mine, and I feel really good about that. On the other side of the race for governor, Byron Donalds may also feel good about his position. He's the Trump-endorsed Republican nominee in Trump's adopted home state, where there are around 1.5 million more Republicans than Democrats. I joined the Tea Party movement, was in the conservative movement. I was able to serve four years in the state legislature, four years in Congress. And I think now is the time to now take the mantle and lead our state into the future. And while Jolly was a Washington insider who worked his way out, Donald started as an outsider who worked his way in. I got to Florida when I was 17 years old off of a Greyhound bus with just a trunk full of clothes. Raised in Brooklyn by a single mother, again, Donald's grew up a Democrat. And in the late 1990s, while in college in Florida, Donalds was arrested, once on a marijuana charge, which was dismissed through a pretrial diversion. He later discussed that in an interview with CBS Miami. The officers came up, asked me if I would empty my pockets. I said, yes, of course. I had a dime bag of marijuana in my pocket. That's the story. And in 2000, he was arrested on a felony bribery charge stemming from a bank debit card transaction. Donald's pleaded no contest and served probation and And the charge was expunged. Here's how he explained it to Fox 4 in Fort Myers back in 2014. Fifteen years ago, I came in contact with a girl. She offered me $1,000 for my debit card and my PIN number, and I gave it to her. I never got the $1,000, but I had to make restitution to the bank. Well, Donald has described his early adulthood as a turning point and has spoken publicly about his Christian faith and his political evolution. I was really at the bottom in life. I had already been arrested twice, made a ton of mistakes. While he was waiting tables, he said he served a party of 12 returning from a revival. And the Lord told me to stop running, so I went out and tapped the lady on the back before they got in their van, and they poured out of the van, they prayed over me, and I gave my life to Christ in that parking lot. Well, Donald's then built a career in banking, finance, and insurance. He moved to southwest Florida, where he and his wife Erica became active in the school choice movement. My mother took me out of public school because she could see that public education was failing me. But what about those kids whose parents can't scrape money together for private school? Don't those kids who grew up like I grew up deserve the same chance that I had? When he ran for Congress in 2020, Donald ran to the right of the primary field. He aligned closely with the MAGA movement and won his primary by just a few hundred votes. For a long time, I've been in the trenches in a lot of these battles dealing with conservatism. And once in Washington, he became a fixture on conservative television, a fierce culture warrior and a leading voice in the Freedom Caucus. You have white liberals like Joe Biden who believe that they own the black vote, but we're gonna show them in November that they don't. By 2023, he was a national conservative star nominated for Speaker of the House by his populist colleagues and serving as a prominent surrogate for President Donald Trump. Democrats are playing the worst kind of politics because Joe Biden is the one who broke our southern border. David Jolly looked at the changing Republican Party, broke ranks and left. Byron Donald's looked at that same party, embraced its populist wing. And became one of its most prominent conservative voices. They have very different ideas and approaches. And the winner will face major decisions on education, health care, the environment, data centers, home insurance, and much more than that. We've interviewed both of them. We've produced long-form reports on where they differ on issues and policy, what they would change, and how they would lead. So please stream our interviews and in-depth explainers on the Fox Local app. Also, look for our one-on-one interviews with candidates in other key races, including St. Petersburg mayor and congressional contests that could determine control of Congress. And if you haven't already voted, please vote and watch our live coverage as the results come in.