Mitch Perry<\/p>\n
ST. PETERSBURG \u2014 A group of Florida Republicans announced Monday to fellow party members that it\u2019s okay to cross party lines and vote for Democrat David Jolly for governor in November.<\/p>\n
The \u201cRepublicans for Jolly<\/a>\u201d group will be co-chaired by Manatee County Commissioner George Kruse and Greg Wilson, who served as a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Treasury Department from 1986-1989, spanning parts of both the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.<\/p>\n Wilson said he would vote against Donalds because of the candidate\u2019s voting record, specifically his support for President Donald Trump\u2019s tariffs and the war on Iran.<\/p>\n \u201cTariffs are a consumer tax,\u201d Wilson said during a press conference in Williams Park in downtown St. Petersburg.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s voted on at least two occasions on President Trump\u2019s tariffs and global trade war that are only increasing the cost of living. Same thing with the illegal and unauthorized war in Iran that is disrupting supply chains. You see that at the gas station every time you go to fill your tank. His votes to sustain and defend President Trump\u2019s war in Iran are driving up costs.\u201d<\/p>\n Kruse is serving his second term on the Manatee commission, which joined a multi-city and county class action challenging Florida Senate Bill 180 in 2025, which strips local control over key development decisions from local officials. Electing a Democrat, he said, would bring needed accountability to a state Legislature that continues to preempt local government decision-making.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have single-party rule,\u201d Kruse said. \u201cThere\u2019s no checks and balances. There\u2019s no friction in Tallahassee. Everyone\u2019s just holding hands and getting along and doing what they want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Perhaps the most significant Republican to announce his support for Jolly is Bobby Williams, a conservative populist who ran on an anti-development platform in his campaign for the Republican nomination for governor.<\/p>\n Williams came in fifth but ahead of Donalds in a couple of counties in North Florida. He says plenty of Republicans tell him that they won\u2019t vote for Donalds but remain wary of voting for a Democrat.<\/p>\n \u201cMy answer was this: If Byron wins, he\u2019s got full control,\u201d Williams told reporters. \u201cHe\u2019s got the House. He\u2019s got the Senate.\u201d<\/p>\n Jolly, on the other hand, would be working with a Republican-controlled Legislature and, thus, \u2018He\u2019s not going to get away with a free ride.\u201d<\/p>\n The biggest message he heard while on the campaign trail was that people are weary of overdevelopment and seeing wildlife destroyed, Williams said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got commissioners and mayors coming to me, \u2018We don\u2019t have a voice in Tallahassee.\u2019 And they know with Byron Donalds they don\u2019t have a voice. And that\u2019s the truth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Williams said that he prayed to God about whether he could endorse Jolly, but is all-in now.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m standing here as a voice for everyday Floridians,\u201d he said. \u201cThey do not want Byron Donalds. But I\u2019ll be honest with you. They didn\u2019t want David Jolly either. Because what they\u2019re hearing and seeing is one-sided. Because they\u2019re Republicans, they\u2019re hearing that one side. They\u2019re hearing that he\u2019s a \u2018trans guy,\u2019 he\u2019s a \u2018socialist guy\u2019 because that\u2019s what they\u2019re being fed and told.\u201d<\/p>\n Jolly is himself a former Republican who left the GOP after he lost his bid for re-election to Congress in 2016. He left the party in 2017 to become an independent and became a Democrat last year, shortly before he declared his candidacy for governor.<\/p>\n His previous GOP affiliation has led some progressive Florida Democrats to resist his candidacy, but in a state with more than 1.5 million more registered Republicans than Democrats, Jolly has been explicit in saying that the math requires the support of a large percentage of independent voters and a certain percentage of Republicans to defeat Donalds in November.<\/p>\n He said Monday that he came to the Democratic Party not to change it, but to make it bigger in Florida.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re just building a bigger table. And everyone\u2019s welcome to our table, but you don\u2019t get to buy your way in,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cYou see, in the last 20 years, the only people who\u2019ve had a seat at the table in Tallahassee have bought their way in. Whether it\u2019s the utilities, whether it\u2019s the developers, whether it\u2019s the data centers, whether it\u2019s the for-profit schools. Whatever it might be, people are buying their way in.\u201d<\/p>\n Monday\u2019s announcement came after a prominent Democrat, Gainesville City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut, switched party lines earlier this month to endorse Donalds for governor.<\/p>\n Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power was not impressed by Monday\u2019s press conference.<\/p>\n \u201cAny Republican signing onto David Jolly\u2019s radical agenda does not understand what they are signing on for,\u201d he told the Phoenix in a text message. \u201cDo they want to destroy \u2018gun culture\u2019? Do they want a $1,000 hurricane tax?\u201d<\/p>\n Power\u2019s reference to a hurricane tax is the basis of an ad from the Donalds campaign suggesting Jolly\u2019s plan to reform property insurance could cost Floridians more.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all lies,\u201d Jolly said. \u201cThe truth is there\u2019s no plan that Donalds has studied. We haven\u2019t published a 10-page plan for them to study. We have laid out a model for over a year-and-a-half that reflects the model that I introduced in Congress for a national catastrophic fund. It does not include an additional $1,000 tax for homeowners. No governor is going to do that. What it does include is a 60% to 70% reduction in people\u2019s homeowners insurance rates.\u201d<\/p>\n Florida Phoenix<\/a>\u00a0is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions:\u00a0info@floridaphoenix.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\t\tKeywords<\/p>\n \t\t\t\tElection 2026,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Politics & Law,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Bobby Williams,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Byron Donalds,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Cynthia Chestnut,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t David Jolly,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t George H.W. Bush,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t George Kruse,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Greg Wilson,\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Ronald Reagan\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mitch Perry ST. PETERSBURG \u2014 A group of Florida Republicans announced Monday to fellow party members that it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[159207,445,159208,1813,8184,159209,159210,159211,159206,55545,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-400075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-bobby-williams","tag-byron-donalds","tag-cynthia-chestnut","tag-david-jolly","tag-election-2026","tag-george-h-w-bush","tag-george-kruse","tag-greg-wilson","tag-politics-law","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400075","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=400075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}