David Jolly

David Jolly is the Democratic nominee for governor, running with former U.S. Rep. Gwen Graham. He represented Florida's 13th District as a Republican from 2014 to 2017, left the party in 2018, and joined the Democratic Party in 2025. His platform includes a state catastrophic-risk fund for property insurance, Medicaid expansion, a moratorium on hyperscale data centers, campaign-finance and ethics reform, and codifying the Roe/Casey abortion framework in Florida law.[1][2][3]

Jolly earned a B.A. from Emory University in 1994 and a J.D. from George Mason University School of Law in 2001.[1][4] He was a staff member for Rep. Bill Young from 1994 to 2006.[4]

Jolly represented Florida's 13th Congressional District in the U.S. House as a Republican from March 14, 2014, to January 3, 2017.[1][4] He later served as an independent from 2018 to 2022, was a member of the Forward Party from 2022 to 2025, and has been a Democrat since 2025.[1] In 2022 he announced the formation of the Forward Party with Andrew Yang and Christine Todd Whitman.[4]

Jolly is an attorney who served for nearly a decade as a political analyst on NBC and MSNBC.[5] He and his wife are raising their family in Pinellas County.[5]

Researched from the cited sources on 2026-10-21.