‘Republicans for Jolly’ effort launches in St. Petersburg

ST. PETERSBURG — A group of Florida Republicans announced Monday to fellow party members that it’s okay to cross party lines and vote for Democrat David Jolly for governor in November.

The “Republicans for Jolly” 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.

Wilson said he would vote against Donalds because of the candidate’s voting record, specifically his support for President Donald Trump’s tariffs and the war on Iran.

“Tariffs are a consumer tax,” Wilson said during a press conference in Williams Park in downtown St. Petersburg.

“He’s voted on at least two occasions on President Trump’s 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 full your tank. His votes to sustain and defend President Trump’s war in Iran are driving up costs.”

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.

“We have single-party rule,” Kruse said. “There’s no checks and balance. There’s no friction in Tallahassee. Everyone’s just holding hands and getting along and doing what they want to do.”

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.

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’t vote for Donalds but remain wary of voting for a Democrat.

“My answer was this: If Byron wins, he’s got full control,” Williams told reporter. “He’s got the House. He’s got the Senate.”

Jolly, on the other hand, would be working with a Republican-controlled Legislature and, thus, ‘He’s not going to get away with a free ride.”

The biggest message he heard while on the campaign trail was that people are weary of overdevelopment and seeing wildlife destroyed, Williams said. “You’ve got commissioners and mayors coming to me, ‘We don’t have a voice in Tallahassee.’ And they know with Byron Donalds they don’t have a voice. And that’s the truth,” he said.

Williams said that he prayed to God about whether he could endorse Jolly, but is all-in now.

“I’m standing here as a voice for everyday Floridians,” he said. “They do not want Byron Donalds. But I’ll be honest with you. They didn’t want David Jolly either. Because what they’re hearing and seeing is one-sided. Because they’re Republicans, they’re hearing that one side. They’re hearing that he’s a ‘trans guy,’ he’s a ‘socialist guy’ because that’s what they’re being fed and told.”

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.

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.

He said Monday that he came to the Democratic Party not to change it, but to make it bigger in Florida.

“We’re just building a bigger table. And everyone’s welcome to our table, but you don’t get to buy your way in,” he said.

“You see in the last 20 years, the only people who’ve had a seat at the table in Tallahassee have bought their way in. Whether it’s the utilities, whether it’s the developers, whether it’s the data centers, whether it’s the for-profit schools. Whatever it might be, people are buying their way in.”

Monday’s announcement came after a prominent Democrat, Gainesville City Commissioner Cynthia Chestnut, switched party lines earlier this month to endorse Donalds for governor.

Republican Party of Florida Chair Evan Power was not impressed by Monday’s press conference.

“Any Republican signing onto David Jolly’s radical agenda does not understand what they are signing on for,” he told the Phoenix in a text message. “Do they want to destroy ‘gun culture’? Do they want a $1,000 hurricane tax?”

Power’s reference to a hurricane tax is the basis of an ad from the Donalds campaign suggesting Jolly’s plan to reform property insurance could cost Floridians more.

“It’s all lies,” Jolly said. “The truth is there’s no plan that Donalds has studied. We haven’t 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 60%-70% reduction in people’s homeowners insurance rates.”