Democrats got a blunt warning and a promise of something better Monday from their party’s candidate for Florida governor.
Speaking about his Republican opponent, Democrat David Jolly was direct, leaving no doubt about his assessment: “I want to be very clear about something, and I want you to hear me and I want you to understand it,” he said. “Folks, Byron Donalds is a liar. Byron Donalds is a liar. He is a liar.”
It was an in-person delivery of Jolly’s latest television ad, in which he used the same term to describe Donalds, though it doesn’t use the l-word as often and emphatically as Jolly did before 250 or so people at the Wynmoor Village condominium community in Coconut Creek.
Like the TV spot, Jolly sought to reassure voters that the way he’s being described by the opposition in its TV campaign isn’t true. “I don’t support a hurricane tax. I don’t support a tax on Social Security. I don’t support oil drilling and I don’t support socialism.”
Jolly’s campaign themes are housing affordability, healthcare and education.
Opponent Donalds, he said, has suddenly “woken up to the fact that we have an affordability crisis right now. He didn’t recognize it while he was hanging out at Mar-a-Lago, in Naples as long as he was, but now he realizes he’s got to win an election. And so we’re seeing a whole new Byron Donalds.”
Jolly was joined in Coconut Creek on Monday by Rahm Emanuel, a potential 2028 candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Emanuel is a former member of Congress, former mayor of Chicago, was chief of staff to former President Barack Obama and was U.S. ambassador to Japan under former President Joe Biden. He said Tallahassee, like Washington, D.C., needs to be cleaned out.
“I came here because I have seen the level of corruption out of Tallahassee and periodically you gotta turn it upside down, shake it out, and power wash the whole place. The legislative branch, executive branch, clean it up.”
Gates McGavick, a Donalds spokesperson, dismissed the Democrats’ assertions.
“No one takes David Jolly’s claims seriously — he’s now a radical Democrat who abandoned every political position he’d ever held the second it became convenient. Jolly and Emanuel have two things in common: bad Democrat policies that would make life more expensive, and the fact that they both peaked years ago. Byron Donalds will win on November 3rd,” he said via text.
Insurance
One of the biggest factors making housing unaffordable is “a homeowner’s insurance market that has collapsed,” Jolly said.
“The CEOs make $20 million. When a big storm happens, they deny 50% of the claims. They close up shop, and they leave because one thing we allow them to do is ship all their profits out of the state while keeping their losses here. That’s today’s hurricane insurance market in Florida, and if you like it and support it, you’re paying two or three times what you used to for 50% of the coverage. That’s the Byron Donalds plan for insurance,” he said.
Jolly wants to establish a state windstorm insurance program that he said would provide cheaper coverage and avoid the problems he outlined. “My friends on the other side of the aisle call it socialism. I just call it cheaper insurance.”
Donalds said that’s what would lead to a hurricane tax that could hit $1,000 a year for Florida families. That’s what Jolly said is a lie.
Former Chicago mayor and ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, left, campaigns with Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly at the Wynmoor Democratic Club on Monday, Oct. 5, 2026 in Coconut Creek.(Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Emanuel
Like all the other Democrats traveling the country in advance of the midterm elections, Emanuel said he’s not focused on his own political future, but on boosting Democratic candidates in 2026.
“There’s plenty of time to think about that,” he said. “We’ll deal with the future, but the first and most important thing is sending a message of change that begins right here in Florida.”
Still, he devoted some of his remarks to themes that are sure to make up parts of his presidential pitch, if he runs. He said public education needs to be transformed, and he said he’s recently been to Republican states in the South to see what they’ve done that has been successful.
Emanuel also said he wants to change Washington, D.C., in several ways: banning stock market trading and participation in prediction markets by officials and — something he said the older Wynmoor audience “may not like but I do” — mandatory retirement at age 75 for the president, members of Congress and federal judges. (Emanuel is 66.)
Emanuel poked some fun at his city’s reputation — and used it to deliver a jab at Republicans in Florida and Washington, D.C.
“I’m from Chicago. We think we wrote the book on corruption. I was reading up on Florida. We got nothing on you,” Emanuel said, describing what he said is a culture in Tallahassee that mirrors what he said is emanating from Washington, D.C., where he said moneyed interests get what they want.
“The Oval office right now looks like eBay,” he said. “The president wakes up every morning thinking of his arch. You can’t afford a meal at the golden arches.”
People listen as Florida Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly speaks during a campaign event at the Wynmoor Democratic Club on Monday, Oct. 5, 2026 in Coconut Creek. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Wynmoor
The audience, most of whom were older voters, frequently applauded Jolly and Emanuel and gave Jolly a standing ovation.
The appearance came two weeks before early voting starts in the big South Florida counties and a month before the final day of voting, on Election Day, Nov. 3. Jolly and Donalds are devoting much of their time to South Florida, home to a quarter of the state’s voters.
Attendance of more than 250 may have been juiced a bit by a frequent feature of political gatherings at big condominium communities: a spread of Danish, rugelach, bagels and cream cheese and coffee. Turnout appeared to have somewhat exceeded expectations; by the time the event started, the offerings were picked over, with only cream cheese and coffee remaining.
Coconut Creek Commissioner Jackie Railey, president of the Wynmoor Community Council, the master association for dozens of associations in the community, said she was impressed. “I was watching the crowd. Everybody was engaged and hopeful.”
Alan Weiner, president of the Democratic Club at Wynmoor, said he is optimistic about the election but “very nervous. That’s being a realist. but I’m also being a realist that we can pull this off if we keep working hard.”
He was at the front of the room, looking out at the audience while Emanuel and Jolly spoke and said he saw something telling. “Nobody left. Everybody was engaged the whole time, 100% of the time, that door didn’t open in back with people walking out. Usually, you know, people get tired, they want to go home.”
Political writer Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.