Commitment 2026<\/a>, both leading candidates for Florida governor made stops in Central Florida on Thursday. <\/p>\nWith affordability in the Sunshine State top of mind for voters, both Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly are promising homeowners that their plans will lower the cost of property insurance. <\/p>\n
The Donalds campaign is airing an attack ad against David Jolly\u2019s plan that says, “No matter where the storm hits, Jolly’s hurricane tax will hit everyone.” <\/p>\n
WESH 2 News sat down with Jolly at a union hall in Orlando and asked whether his plan for a state catastrophic insurance fund requires a $1,000 hurricane tax and, if not, how he would intend to fund it. <\/p>\n
“No, it eliminates a tax that is currently under law,\u201d Jolly said. \u201cByron Donalds is saying there’s a $1,000 tax. That’s the current law if Citizens fails. My plan is to have a state catastrophic fund, a state sovereign wealth fund, fully removes hurricane and wind from the private market. How do you fund it? First of all, you can take the first $10 to $12 billion that’s in our hurricane fund now. Republicans use it to bail out insurance companies. I’m talking about using it to get the backs of ratepayers. You can tax the profits of insurance companies that Republicans let us let them ship out of state right now.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jolly says his plan would cut insurance policies by 60% to 70%. <\/p>\n
The Florida State University study mentioned in the Donalds ad was commissioned in 2025. It analyzed a bipartisan proposal from lawmakers that would require Citizens Insurance to offer windstorm coverage for all homeowners. <\/p>\n
“Any way you look at that study,\u201d Donalds said, \u201cit’s very comparable to what (Jolly\u2019s) put out. When you do a one-size-fits-all government plan that covers all wind, that’s what the FSU study looked at.” <\/p>\n
Donalds was also in Orlando on Thursday taking questions from voters at a town hall and then from WESH 2. <\/p>\n
\u201cHow will your ‘Bring Down the Bill’ plan actually reduce costs for Florida consumers?\u201d WESH 2 Investigative Reporter Justin Schecker asked Donalds. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe’re going to reduce premiums 20% in the state,\u201d Donalds said. \u201cOne, we’re going to keep the tort reform that Gov. DeSantis put into place, we’re going to keep that on the books. Two, we’re going to do commonsense reforms to Florida’s regulations that will push down costs continuously in our state. Three, we want to reform home hardening programs that make sure they are targeted towards strapping down older homes so they can see real premium relief. And four, post-storm, you shouldn’t have to wait for a building permit. Those permits should be automatic. We want to make sure that people are getting back in their homes quickly. The quicker you can rebuild post-storm, the lower the premium costs are.\u201d <\/p>\n
Then there\u2019s the question of property tax relief. Donalds supports Amendment 3. <\/p>\n
If it passes in November with 60% of the vote, Florida sheriffs are sounding the alarm about budget cuts and slower response times. <\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve talked with all the sheriffs about Amendment 3,\u201d Donalds said, \u201cand this is something where we have a disagreement on. But my opinion is that the people of Florida need relief. Property taxes have doubled in our state the last seven years. Family budgets have not doubled the last seven years. Everybody knows that. So local governments, we ought to be responsible.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jolly opposes the proposal to raise the homestead property tax exemption to $250,000 in two years.<\/p>\n
“I’ve always stood with law enforcement,\u201d Jolly said, \u201cand it’s interesting because I’m in a space now where I say it’s not just about backing the blue; it’s trusting the blue. I trust the sheriffs who are telling us that Amendment 3 would defund them.” <\/p>\n
In less than seven weeks, Florida voters will decide who replaces term-limited Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. <\/p>\n
“We’re going to win,\u201d Donalds said. \u201cI mean, we feel very confident in our ability to be successful in 47 days. But yeah, it’s a tighter environment. Everybody knows that. It’s not a secret, but we’re doing the work every single day on the ground.\u201d <\/p>\n
Jolly told WESH 2 that based on internal polling his campaign has reviewed, he\u2019s confident he can do something a Democrat has not done in more than 30 years in Florida. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf the election were tonight, we’d win the race,\u201d Jolly said. <\/p>\n
In the next 48 hours, Jolly said his campaign will have a new ad. <\/p>\n
\u201cYou have politicians wanting to build ballrooms and data centers,\u201d Jolly said, teasing the contents of the ad. \u201cI’m focused on housing, healthcare, food and gas, good schools for your kids, and no data centers. That’s it. That’s why I’m running for governor.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Governor candidates Byron Donalds, David Jolly make stops in Orlando as they promote their property insurance plans ORLANDO,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[445,147,6025,1813,160286,37573,36390,139,141,140,5218,914,73407,1284,16663,918,164],"class_list":["post-402966","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-byron-donalds","tag-central-florida","tag-cost","tag-david-jolly","tag-donalds-ad","tag-hurricane-tax","tag-jolly","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-plan","tag-state","tag-stop","tag-thursday","tag-voter","tag-wesh","tag-year"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402966","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=402966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Justin](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1789685651_664_95ffa778-5e95-4091-a1d0-21b59f3a8f6f_1727473118.png\")
<\/a>ORLANDO, Fla. \u2014<\/p>\n