Speaking at an event in Orlando Friday, former U.S. Congressman David Jolly described a state suffering from an economic crisis and “exhausted by culture wars” under longtime GOP leadership.

Jolly, an ex-Republican from St. Petersburg now running as a Democrat, was making an appearance in the home turf of his main rival for the Democratic nomination for governor, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings.

He told the Tiger Bay Club of Central Florida he would enact significant reforms to the state’s insurance market and education system if elected to the governor’s mansion in November.

“Are we going to be a state that becomes the Hamptons twenty years from now, or are we actually going to be a state that ensures we have a robust middle class that is capable of growing Florida strong?” Jolly said, referring to the famous enclave of the rich in New York. “Because I’m afraid of what’s going to happen if we don’t do something dramatically different.”

Jolly said he’d establish a state “catastrophic fund” for homeowners’ insurance, fully remove hurricane and wind coverage from the private market and put it in a state sovereign wealth fund and cut homeowners’ insurance by 60 to 70%.

He also promised a 10-year “renaissance” in public education by using the tourist development tax to give teachers a 30% pay raise, investing in fixing failing infrastructure and setting up services like mental health and hunger programs within the education system.

He added he would support immigrant communities and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, or DEI, and invest in access to healthcare, upward mobility, home ownership and affordable housing.

“We need to return to making responsible social investments…whether that’s housing, whether it’s healthcare, whether it’s education,” he said. “And along the way restore a little bit of honesty and kindness to the state where everybody wants to return to visit and their kids and grandkids want to grow up.”

Jolly also said he’d get the state “out of the Alligator Alcatraz business” by turning the land back over to Miami-Dade County, fire controversial Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo on his first day in office and reform the state’s private school voucher program to make it “means-tested.”

He also criticized a Florida law requiring local sheriffs to sign cooperation agreements with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, saying Florida, as a state, should suspend the agreements until that agency reforms.

Jolly did, however, have one positive thing to say about Florida’s GOP leadership. He said he had to give Gov. Ron DeSantis “a little bit of credit” for “trying to pump the brakes on some of this AI stuff,” referring to the governor’s attempts to regulate artificial intelligence in the state.

DeSantis is term-limited this year. GOP officials vying for the Republican nomination include U.S. Congressman Byron Donalds, R-Naples, former House Speaker Paul Renner and Lt. Gov. Jay Collins.

An audience member asked Jolly if it’s even possible for a Democrat to win in Florida, comparing his candidacy to that of former Gov. Charlie Crist, another Republican-turned-Democrat who unsuccessfully ran for governor again in 2014 and 2022, as well as the Florida GOP’s significant advantage in registered voters over Florida Democrats.

Jolly said 2026 is different from 2022 and a Democratic victory is now possible in part because people are “running away from Republican candidates,” though not entirely because Democrats are winning people’s hearts and minds.

He said recent Democratic wins in special elections in red districts, like the state House race in Palm Beach County where U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club is located, gives him hope.

“You want to redefine our national politics in a moment of division and crisis? It starts right here in the state of Florida by electing statewide Democrats,” he said. “But I’ll also tell you this: If this happens in ’26, the road to the White House runs through Florida again in ’28.”