Florida Gubernatorial Hopefuls Seek To Expand The Campaigning Map

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — The capital of Florida is used to seeing lawmakers of all stripes. What’s more uncommon: Both parties’ gubernatorial candidates crossing the moss-strewn city a week before a tight election.

Yet on Tuesday, Republican Rep. Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly went before crowds in the typically blue dot amid north Florida’s red expanse, highlighting a race where Democrats feel confident about driving out their base while Republicans hope they can eat into traditional Democratic strongholds.

Polls show the race is tighter than statewide contests have been in recent years, despite structural advantages for Donalds, including a heavy advantage in national party support, running in a conservative-led state and fundraising. Jolly and Donalds campaigning in Tallahassee provides both outreach to their base voters and those who may be flippable.

Jolly and Donalds have made campaign stops across the Panhandle in recent days as early voting goes into full swing across the state. They both visited areas rich with GOP voters, such as Pensacola and Panama City, before Donalds stepped off his campaign bus Tuesday morning at a local sports bar on Tallahassee’s suburban east side.

Unlike the rest of the Panhandle, there are at least 30,000 more Democrats than Republicans in Tallahassee’s Leon County; many Republican candidates decide to spend crucial late campaigning time elsewhere. Donalds, meanwhile, walked onto the stage in front of a crowd of retirees, business owners and lobbyists packed into Bumpa’s Local 349 and admired the turnout.

“This is Tallahassee?” said Donalds, who represents a congressional district in southwest Florida. “Oh I like this.”

Supporters at the Donalds event said they knew the candidate long before he first successfully ran for a Naples-based state House seat in 2016. Donalds said the first time he stepped into the state was when he got off a Greyhound bus in downtown Tallahassee.

“When I tell people about how I love this state, it’s because everything that I’ve been able to do in my life has been done in Florida,” Donalds said.

Donalds and Jolly have both made previous stops in Tallahassee, but the crowd at Jolly’s rally cheered louder and louder each time he ran through his promised agenda: Giving more money to public schools, expanding Medicaid, and bringing science back to public health. Jolly drew roaring cheers when he promised to end state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo’s leadership of Florida’s Department of Health. Democrats have long criticized Ladapo, appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, for his vaccine skepticism.

“If you ever want to rile up a crowd just tell them you’re going to fire the surgeon general,” Jolly said of the overwhelming response.

Jolly’s rally attracted several state and local officials who all spoke before the crowd about bringing change after more than 30 years of GOP control. Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried promised the crowd of Jolly supporters the 19-point loss her party experienced in 2022 will not happen again this year, even though national Democrat groups have not put heavy focus on the state.

“A lot of our national partners are seeing Florida as lost,” Fried said. “But not the people in this room who continue to believe in what’s possible for this state.”

State lawmakers at the Donalds event continued GOP criticism of Democrat Angie Nixon, who is running for Senate against Republican incumbent Ashley Moody, over her membership in the Democratic Socialists of America and a recent dustup over Nixon’s comments whether Cuba was a dictatorship to CBS News. They also riled up the crowd by hammering Jolly for promising to apologize on behalf of the state for DeSantis’ time in office.

State Sen. Corey Simon told the crowd that Jolly would undo DeSantis-era policies that helped the state grow.

“We’re not apologizing for making sure that families get to put food on the table,” Simon said. “We’re not apologizing for students being able to excel in their classrooms.”

One of the dozens of people at the Donalds event was U.S. Navy veteran Carlton Smyly, who said he has followed Donalds throughout his political career and long hoped he would run for governor.

“It was the greatest thing he could have possibly done,” Smyly said. “That’s why I got up at 6 o’clock this morning to make it here.”

Later at Jolly’s rally, R. B. Holmes, Jr., a pastor of the historic Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Tallahassee and the head of a faith coalition supporting him, kicked off the event by praying for the victims of a mass shooting that occurred Saturday at nearby Florida A&M University. Holmes over the years has partnered with DeSantis, particularly during the Covid pandemic, and former Gov. Rick Scott, but he said the Tallahassee community has hope that Jolly and his running mate Gwen Graham will bring change.

“I think we’ll move from hating each other and begin to unite together,” Holmes said. “It’s time to move from banning books, and we need to ban hatred.”

After the event, Jolly said he has to perform better even in areas where he will not win in order to clinch the statewide vote. But he was surprised to see that Donalds made his Tallahassee stop so close to Election Day.

“We’ve put in the field work, we’ve demonstrated our commitment to the community,” Jolly said. “Hopefully that will ultimately translate into votes.”