Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings.<\/a><\/p>\nHe told the Tiger Bay Club of Central Florida he would enact significant reforms to the state\u2019s insurance market and education system if elected to the governor\u2019s mansion in November.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre 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?\u201d Jolly said, referring to the famous enclave of the rich in New York. \u201cBecause I\u2019m afraid of what\u2019s going to happen if we don\u2019t do something dramatically different.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jolly said he\u2019d establish a state \u201ccatastrophic fund\u201d for homeowners\u2019 insurance, fully remove hurricane and wind coverage from the private market and put it in a state sovereign wealth fund and cut homeowners\u2019 insurance by 60 to 70%.<\/p>\n
He also promised a 10-year \u201crenaissance\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe need to return to making responsible social investments\u2026whether that\u2019s housing, whether it\u2019s healthcare, whether it\u2019s education,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jolly also said he\u2019d get the state \u201cout of the Alligator Alcatraz business\u201d 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\u2019s private school voucher program to make it \u201cmeans-tested.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Jolly did, however, have one positive thing to say about Florida\u2019s GOP leadership. He said he had to give Gov. Ron DeSantis \u201ca little bit of credit\u201d for \u201ctrying to pump the brakes on some of this AI stuff,\u201d referring to the governor\u2019s attempts to regulate artificial intelligence in the state.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
An audience member asked Jolly if it\u2019s 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\u2019s significant advantage in registered voters over Florida Democrats.<\/p>\n
Jolly said 2026 is different from 2022 and a Democratic victory is now possible in part because people are \u201crunning away from Republican candidates,\u201d though not entirely because Democrats are winning people\u2019s hearts and minds.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s Mar-a-Lago club is located, gives him hope.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou 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,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I\u2019ll also tell you this: If this happens in \u201926, the road to the White House runs through Florida again in \u201928.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaking at an event in Orlando Friday, former U.S. Congressman David Jolly described a state suffering from an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2811,28,114,115,1335,139,141,140,99,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-236225","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-orlando","8":"tag-election","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-latest-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-orange-county","13":"tag-orlando","14":"tag-orlando-headlines","15":"tag-orlando-news","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}