Byron Donalds meets with supporters in Kissimmee as David Jolly focuses on insurance reform
With five weeks to go until election day, some polling suggests the race for Florida governor will be tight.
Republican candidate for governor Byron Donalds made a stop Monday afternoon on his “Defending the Florida Dream Tour” with his running mate Bryan Avila at the Nacion de Fe church in Kissimmee.
After some opening remarks in Spanish, Avila took a shot at the Democratic nominee for governor.
“The policies that the radical left are pushing,” Avila said, “there is nothing jolly about those policies.”
Donalds and Avila are campaigning on continuing the conservative agenda of Gov. Ron DeSantis, and they’re telling supporters Florida cannot go down the path of Democratic-led states like California, Illinois and New York.
“Over the next 36 days that the people of Florida are going to choose conservative policy once again,” Donalds said. “And we are going to see over the next 36 days that the people of Florida will tell the Democratic Party that they will not have power in the great state of Florida.”
On the issue of affordability, Donalds said he supports Amendment 3 because he believes homeowners need property tax relief.
Meanwhile, Democratic candidate for governor David Jolly focused on his plans to reform property insurance during a virtual news conference Monday afternoon.
“The state of homeowners’ insurance in Florida, it’s broken, we know that,” Jolly said. “The current state of homeowners’ insurance in Florida is we allow undercapitalized firms to come into Florida. We have a reinsurance fund, a hurricane fund, to bail them out when the big storm happens. We allow them to shift their profits out of state, keep their losses here. When the storms occur, they deny 50 percent of the claims.”
Jolly is promoting his plan to create a state catastrophic fund that removes hurricane and wind coverage from the private market.
Jolly said he is prepared to take executive action if lawmakers don’t act to cap big insurance companies from moving millions of dollars to sibling company accounts.
Over the weekend, President Trump responded to reports Donalds was trying to distance himself from the president’s endorsement based on changes to his campaign website.
“If Florida thought the story that Byron “dropped” me was true, he would lose the Election, and that would be a terrible thing because he’s going to be a fantastic Governor!” President Trump wrote in his Truth Social Post.
This Thursday, Donalds will be at a midterm rally in Lakeland featuring Vice President JD Vance.