Why David Jolly’s Win Matters Regardless of What Happens In November

Florida remains a steep climb, but his nomination has already shown how a broader pro-democracy coalition can work.

Former Republican David Jolly at his election night party after winning the Democratic nomination for governor of Florida.

If you wanted to hear an old-school Republican in Florida on Tuesday night, you had to go to a Democratic victory party.

Standing beside his family in Miami Lakes, David Jolly thanked Democrats for welcoming him into their party. Then he defended free markets, lean government and the belief that politicians should stay out of people’s bedrooms. He had just won the Democratic nomination for governor.

Across Florida, Trump-backed Byron Donalds declared that Republicans were now “one united Republican Party.” Jolly stood before people who disagreed with him and told them exactly what he still believed.

The Democrat sounded more like the Republican Party I joined. Jolly had carried his old beliefs with him. His former party had left them behind.

I know something about walking onto a Democratic stage after spending most of my political career on the other side. David and I overlapped in Congress as Republicans, members of a party that talked constantly about limited government, individual liberty and constitutional restraint. When I spoke at the Democratic National Convention in 2024, nobody asked me to abandon those beliefs before walking onto the stage. They welcomed me because we agreed that Donald Trump could not be trusted with power again.

In my speech at the 2024 DNC, we all agreed saving our democracy came first. We can debate policy details after we’ve saved the country.

Donalds’s version of unity comes with conditions. Republicans can compete for Trump’s attention and disagree about tactics, but eventually they are expected to fall in line. Public disagreement with him can end a career. That is a very different kind of party from the one David and I joined.

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Losing a political home is painful in ways that are hard to explain. A party is where you made friends and found people who spoke a familiar language. When it changes, you spend years wondering whether you are the one who moved. But there is also relief when you stop waiting for the old party to return and begin speaking plainly about what it has become.

Jolly left the GOP in 2018, spent several years as an independent and registered as a Democrat last year. He has changed some positions along the way, as thoughtful people sometimes do. He has never tried to erase his past or pretend he was always a conventional Democrat. Nearly three-quarters of a million Florida Democrats voted for him anyway.

Republicans once warned constantly about government intrusion. Under Trump and Ron DeSantis, the party has used public power to police classrooms, pressure private companies and dictate deeply personal medical decisions. Donalds has continued that approach, attacking Jolly over transgender issues while Florida families struggle with insurance premiums and housing costs.

Democrats have legitimate policy disagreements with Jolly, and nobody should be asked to hide them. But we cannot exclude allies over every argument left over from the years before Trump. Debates over taxes and regulation depend on preserving a system in which presidents obey courts and voters decide who holds power.

The obvious criticism is that Florida Democrats have tried this before. They nominated Charlie Crist, another former Republican, in 2022 and watched him lose to Ron DeSantis by nearly 20 points. Some Democrats understandably fear that the party is repeating the same mistake with another former Republican.

That concern deserves to be taken seriously. Longtime Democrats have spent years doing the unglamorous work of organizing while their party collapsed across Florida. Welcoming political exiles should not mean ignoring the people who kept the lights on. Jolly will have to earn their trust and show that a broader coalition does not simply require Democrats to make all the concessions.

He also faces terrible political math. Florida has roughly 1.5 million more registered Republicans than Democrats. No Democrat has won the governorship since 1994, and Donalds enters the general election with Trump’s endorsement and an enormous financial advantage. Jolly could run an excellent campaign and still lose.

If he does, the result will not prove that nominating him was a mistake. By that standard, almost every Democrat Florida has nominated for governor over the past three decades was a mistake. Elections tell us who won, but they cannot tell us whether a candidate began rebuilding trust or gave politically homeless voters somewhere to stand. Florida Democrats will never return to statewide relevance without persuading independents and some Republicans. His campaign will show whether enough independents and disaffected Republicans are ready to move with him.

The people in Miami Lakes did not resolve every disagreement Tuesday night. David Jolly still disagrees with Democrats about plenty, and so do I. Everyone in that room simply decided those arguments were no excuse to stand apart.

I would rather have those arguments inside a functioning democracy than watch Donald Trump decide which elections count and which laws apply to him. Authoritarians do not need everyone to support them. They need everyone who opposes them to remain divided. If enough Americans refuse to give Trump that advantage, we will defeat Trumpism.