With his splashy campaign launch behind him, the real work begins for Jerry Demings in his quest to be Florida\u2019s next governor.<\/p>\n
The Orange County mayor, who kicked off his bid before friends and supporters at an Orlando hotel earlier this month, will spend the next year convincing donors big and small he is the Democrats\u2019 best candidate, building a campaign operation from the ground up, and heading out on the road to meet voters in every pocket of the state.<\/p>\n
It will be a steep learning curve for Demings,\u00a0who has been successful in multiple local races for sheriff and mayor over the last few decades but has never faced a statewide campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to spend a lot of time dialing for dollars, but you also have to do the retail politics of it,\u201d said Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer, a Demings ally who ran unsuccessfully\u00a0for Florida Attorney General in 2002. \u201cIt\u2019s nice, though, to be centrally located because you can get up in the morning and go to any part of the state and still make it back to Orlando if you want.\u201d<\/p>\n
Demings has never had trouble raising money for campaigns \u2013 but he\u2019s only run in Orange County, where\u00a0he is an institution and\u00a0the sums needed to be competitive are far smaller.<\/p>\n
In 2022, he raised $356,000, about seven times more than his next best-funded competitor. That same year, he helped raise $1.5 million for a campaign to raise the sales tax to pay for transportation upgrades, though it was was ultimately defeated.<\/p>\n
During his first mayoral bid in 2018, facing stiffer competition and without the advantage of incumbency, he raised more than $800,000.<\/p>\n
Demings will have have a major assist when it comes to statewide and national fundraising \u2014 his wife, former U.S. Rep. Val Demings, who gained a national profile after helping leading the first impeachment trial against President Trump in 2019 and making President Biden\u2019s shortlist for a running mate the following year.<\/p>\n
He campaigned with her across Florida three years ago when she was on the ballot for U.S. Senate, and will count on her advice as he crisscrosses Florida in the lead up to the Democratic primary next year.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy wife is experienced. She\u2019s run statewide before,\u201d he said. \u201cShe\u2019s well-known all over this country and she\u2019s well-known all over the state of Florida. I count that as a blessing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Val Demings raised $79 million for her unsuccessful bid against then-U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, far more than Charlie Crist, the party\u2019s nominee for governor that year.<\/p>\n
Jasmine Burney-Clark, who served as the Florida Campaign Director for President Joe Biden in 2024, went as far as to call Val Demings her husband\u2019s \u201ccompetitive advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that she stands to help his race significantly bring in the funds and the notoriety,\u201d said Clark, who founded Equal Ground, an Orlando-based group focused on Black voter turnout.<\/p>\n
If so, Demings may be able to quickly erase the fundraising gap between himself and his main party rival \u2014 though he has a long way to go to match the GOP.<\/p>\n
Last month, Florida Politics reported that David Jolly, the other major Democratic candidate in the race so far, had raised about $2 million. That total generated concerns among Democrats about his lack of fundraising prowess.<\/p>\n
On the Republican side, Trump-endorsed U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds has raised at least $31 million and former House Speaker Paul Renner has raised more than $3.5 million.<\/p>\n
Matthew Isbell, a Democratic elections analyst, noted Jolly had been consolidating support from Democrats across the state prior to Demings entering the field. For example, earlier this month more than two dozen faith leaders from Black congregations announced a coalition to back Jolly.<\/p>\n
But Isbell added that Demings has one thing Jolly does not: a decades-long track record as a Democrat. Jolly is a former Republican congressman from St. Petersburg who switched parties before launching his bid for the governor\u2019s mansion.<\/p>\n
Demings\u2019 profile may also have risen statewide as he\u2019s squabbled in recent months with Gov. Ron DeSantis, Attorney General James Uthmeier and Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia over issues ranging from immigration enforcement to \u201cDOGE\u201d audits.<\/p>\n
\u201cDemings has a very real shot in that primary,\u201d Isbell said.<\/p>\n
When he launched his bid last week, Demings said he intended to serve out the remaining year of his mayoral term as he campaigns. His early months on the stump are expected to include a listening tour around the state, he said.<\/p>\n
His campaign didn\u2019t respond to questions this week about any scheduled campaign events or how much money was raised at the kickoff rally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With his splashy campaign launch behind him, the real work begins for Jerry Demings in his quest to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[2811,28,29,114,115,1335,139,141,140,99,109],"class_list":{"0":"post-46399","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-florida-news","11":"tag-latest-headlines","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-orange-county","14":"tag-orlando","15":"tag-orlando-headlines","16":"tag-orlando-news","17":"tag-politics","18":"tag-social"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46399","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=46399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}