{"id":409584,"date":"2026-09-24T20:08:48","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T20:08:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/409584\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T20:08:48","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T20:08:48","slug":"disappointed-famu-cancels-gubernatorial-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/409584\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Disappointed\u2019: FAMU cancels gubernatorial debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) &#8211; Florida A&amp;M University (FAMU) announced Thursday it canceled what was supposed to be a televised gubernatorial debate between Rep. Byron Donalds and former Rep. David Jolly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The debate was supposed to take place next week for one hour and be livestreamed across Spectrum News digital platforms for free. The university said the students were being let down.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cFlorida Agricultural and Mechanical University is disappointed that our students will not have the opportunity to hear from the candidates for Governor in a televised debate hosted on our campus this election season,\u201d FAMU said in a statement. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text text-center\">Florida Politics: <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Soon after the university announced the public debate, Democratic gubernatorial candidate David Jolly <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wctv.tv\/2026\/09\/21\/david-jolly-declines-debates-with-byron-donalds-florida-governors-race\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wctv.tv\/2026\/09\/21\/david-jolly-declines-debates-with-byron-donalds-florida-governors-race\/\">declined general election debates<\/a> with Republican candidate Byron Donalds.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Jolly said in the statement that the current campaign environment and \u201cbad faith\u201d led to the decision, leaving the FAMU debate in limbo. That limbo is now over, and the debate won\u2019t occur.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">However, a spokesperson for FAMU said students\u2019 interest in hearing from the candidates is still strong. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Instead of a debate, FAMU\u2019s Student Government Association (SGA) is inviting the gubernatorial candidates to engage with students before the general election.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cEach candidate will be offered an equal opportunity to share their platform, priorities, and vision for our state,\u201d the statement read. <\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WCTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV) &#8211; Florida A&amp;M University (FAMU) announced Thursday it canceled what was supposed to be a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409585,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[445,1813,30462,162576,2324,115,99,914,232,234,233],"class_list":["post-409584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tallahassee","tag-byron-donalds","tag-david-jolly","tag-debate","tag-famu-governors-candidate","tag-florida-am-university","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-state","tag-tallahassee","tag-tallahassee-headlines","tag-tallahassee-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409584","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=409584"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409584\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}