‘Republicans for Jolly’ effort launches in St. Petersburg

Filed 1h ago · Via Florida Phoenix · The Buffoon Desk

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Maple Leaf Rag

Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0

Photo: Jeff Hitchcock from Seattle, WA, USA · CC BY 2.0 · via Wikimedia Commons

A group calling itself ‘Republicans for Jolly,’ co-chaired by Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse and former Treasury official Greg Wilson, launched Monday in St. Petersburg to back Democrat David Jolly for Florida governor over Republican Byron Donalds. Wilson cited Donalds's votes supporting Trump's tariffs and the Iran conflict as consumer-cost drivers.

Former GOP gubernatorial candidate Bobby Williams, who finished fifth in the primary, also endorsed Jolly, framing single-party control in Tallahassee as leaving no check on the Legislature. Jolly, a former Republican congressman who became a Democrat last year, said he's building a bigger tent rather than remaking the party.

Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power dismissed the effort, pointing to a Donalds campaign ad claiming Jolly's insurance plan amounts to a ‘$1,000 hurricane tax,’ a claim Jolly called false, saying his catastrophic-fund model includes no such tax and would cut insurance rates significantly.

The defection follows a Gainesville Democrat's earlier switch to endorse Donalds, underscoring how fluid party lines have become in a race both sides now treat as a base-math problem rather than an ideology fight.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.

✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK

Watching Republicans campaign against their own nominee's tariffs is a bit like watching a man complain the fence he built himself is blocking his view. Wilson served in Treasury under two presidents who'd have found today's tariff math unrecognizable, and he's not wrong that the bill for a trade war shows up at the pump. Whether that adds up to enough votes to flip a state with a million and a half more registered Republicans is a different question entirely.

Source: Read the original at Florida Phoenix → Scored: Maple Leaf Rag · Kevin MacLeod · CC BY 4.0

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