Florida Governor's Race, the Final Sunday: Jolly Rallied in Miami, Donalds Closed With DeSantis in Tampa

Florida's governor's race spent its final Sunday at both ends of the state. Democrat David Jolly held a rally in Miami, while Republicans gathered around Byron Donalds in Town 'n' Country, outside Tampa — where Donalds closed the evening at the Cuban Civic Club on his Defending the Florida Dream bus tour, joined by Gov. Ron DeSantis, the term-limited Republican he is running to succeed. Polls close statewide at 7 p.m. Eastern on Tuesday, 8 p.m. in the western Panhandle counties on Central time.

The two campaigns are selling opposite products. Jolly, a former Republican congressman who became a Democrat in the Trump era, has made decency itself the pitch — 'In the world of Donald Trump, be Ted Lasso,' he said in an interview in the Associated Press report from Pembroke Pines this weekend, casting Donalds as Trump and himself as the relentlessly optimistic coach. Donalds, quoted from the September GOP midterm convention, calls that moderate pitch a facade. The money is not close: donors have funneled more than $177 million to boost Donalds, against more than $27 million raised by Jolly, according to Florida campaign-finance filings cited in the same report.

The late DeSantis embrace is its own story. The governor withheld his endorsement until Donalds won the August Republican primary — Donalds had backed Trump over DeSantis in 2024 — and then spent the final week stumping for the ticket, from Pinellas County with Sen. Ashley Moody last Monday to Tampa on Sunday. Polls show Donalds with a tight lead in a state Trump carried by 13 points in 2024; Florida Democrats point to local wins, including Miami's election of a Democratic mayor late last year, as evidence the state is not settled. If Donalds holds on, he would be the first Black Republican to serve as a governor since Reconstruction. Tuesday decides it.