A pair of Democratic candidates in neighboring Southeastern states, who held high offices as Republicans, are aiming for something members of their new party haven’t achieved since Bill Clinton was president: win their state’s governorships.
In Florida, former Rep. David Jolly is running for governor, and so is former Georgia Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan in the Peach State.
Both left the GOP amid the rise of President Donald Trump in his second term. But their journeys to the Democratic Party were much different.
Jolly, 52, represented part of Florida’s Gulf Coast. He was a protégé of the late Rep. Bill Young, effectively inheriting his seat in a 2014 special election after the Republican incumbent, a former House Appropriations Committee chairman, died after more than 43 years in the House. On Capitol Hill, Jolly was considered a centrist among House Republicans. He was ranked the 48th most bipartisan lawmaker by the Lugar Center in 2016, and supported a balanced budget amendment and a ban on offshore drilling.
In 2016, Jolly lost his seat to Charlie Crist, a former Florida governor and another Republican-turned-Democrat.
Jolly, a Trump critic, left the GOP in 2018.
“I don’t think the future is between the two parties,” Jolly said on Real Time with Bill Maher. He briefly led the “Serve America Movement” and later joined Andrew Yang’s Forward Party.
Seven years later, Jolly’s political tune is different.
He joined the Democratic Party this past April, before launching his gubernatorial campaign in June.
Jolly views himself as an agent of change for Florida, while advocating policy positions that are strikingly different from his GOP incarnation. Gone are the days of calling for the overturning of Roe v. Wade (which the Supreme Court did years after he left office). Jolly supports expanded abortion rights. Although he still calls himself a gun supporter, Jolly wants additional background checks, liability insurance for all firearms owners, and an assault weapons ban.
These shifts in policies are playing well with Democrats, according to Sarah Rumpf, a contributing editor at Mediaite and a “Never Trump” Republican who supports Jolly.
“He’s very frank about it, and he talks about how the things that he believed were true have been undermined by the way the Republicans have taken such a radical MAGA turn,” Rumpf said in an interview.
Jolly has mostly avoided culture-war fights, saying they’d be “over” if he won. While he said it should be up to local school districts to decide what books are in libraries, Jolly supports education opt-outs for families.
“The Democratic Party’s values are absolutely right and don’t need to be changed,” he told the Sun Sentinel, which covers South Florida.
But that conflicting narrative may not go over well with voters, Ryan Owens, Ph.D., a Florida State University political science professor and an affiliate faculty member at the FSU College of Law, said in an interview.
“Voters question your principles when you change on major issues,” added Owens, who is also the director of the Florida Institute for Governance and Civics. Voters in the highly polarized Trump era prefer ideological purity to nuance, he continued.
Should Jolly make it through the primary (he’s currently running unopposed), he would likely face Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) or former state House Speaker Paul Renner in the Nov. 3, 2026, general election. Florida first lady Casey DeSantis is also a possible candidate.
No Democrat has won the Florida governorship since 1994.
Although Jolly’s political progression unfolded over several years, Duncan’s happened within months.
Duncan, 50, is a former minor league baseball player for the Miami Marlins organization who reached as high as Triple-A before a shoulder injury ended his playing days. He then built a business career before turning to politics, being elected to the Georgia House in 2012 to represent a suburban and exurban Atlanta-area district.
Duncan ran for lieutenant governor in 2018 against then-state Senate President Pro Tempore David Shafer. Considered an underdog, Duncan secured the Republican nomination by just one percentage point, with support from conservative activists. He went on to defeat the Democratic nominee by about four points in the general election.
In the administration of Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), Duncan focused on healthcare and tech policy. He was thrust into the national spotlight after the 2020 election. Duncan, Kemp, and GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger resisted efforts by the president, his underlings, and some GOP state legislators to reverse former President Joe Biden’s Georgia win by appointing an alternate slate of electors.
In 2021, Duncan criticized Trump’s election-fraud claims, arguing they prompted state legislators to pass new election rules aimed at limiting minority voting participation. He chose not to seek reelection and embarked on a book tour exploring the post-Trump GOP.
After his term ended in 2023, Duncan joined CNN as a contributor, where he championed Nikki Haley’s bid for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. When Trump secured the GOP nomination, Duncan considered aligning with the centrist group No Labels but ultimately decided not to run for president.
In the months that followed, he endorsed Biden for reelection and later former Vice President Kamala Harris, whom Democrats nominated when Biden exited the race. At last year’s Democratic National Convention, Duncan still called himself a Republican — one who believed Biden and Harris were decent people he disagreed with, but who saw Trump as “a direct threat to democracy.”
Even after Trump’s November 2024 win, Duncan still called himself a Republican, despite the Georgia Republican Party expelling him in January for disloyalty.
That changed in August when Duncan suddenly announced he was a Democrat. In an Atlanta Journal-Constitution column, he wrote that the plight of “uninsured Georgians” was a key factor, as was a $200 million cut in SNAP benefits. He pushed universal background checks and red flag laws on guns, citing public opinion.
A month later, Duncan is running for governor as a Democrat. No Democrat has won Georgia’s governorship since 1998.
Duncan’s announcement caused some of his former political allies to question his motivations. Buzz Brockway, a former Republican state House colleague of Duncan, said the now-Democratic gubernatorial candidate was known at the Georgia Capitol in Atlanta as a small-government conservative.
“I hope that core is still in there and some of the policies he’s switched on are just political convenience to try to get some votes,” Brockway said in an interview.
Duncan’s path to the governor’s mansion is more competitive than Jolly’s in Florida. Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and former DeKalb County CEO Michael Thurmond are polling well ahead of Duncan. A close fourth is progressive former state Sen. Jason Esteves.
Whoever wins the Democratic nomination will face a tough general election Republican opponent. Raffensperger is seeking the GOP nomination, along with Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr. Though both are considered underdogs against Trump-endorsed Lt. Gov. Burt Jones.
For Duncan to succeed, he’ll have to make it to a primary runoff, said J. Benjamin Taylor, Ph.D., a political science professor at Kennesaw State University.
“None of the candidates currently running has statewide name recognition strong enough to easily secure the nomination,” Taylor said.
Perhaps the biggest challenge for Jolly and Duncan is whether their party shifts will lead to success — or political irrelevance. For every Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV), whose switch from Democrat to Republican during Trump’s first term hasn’t mattered to West Virginia voters, there’s a Crist, whose changes in party affiliation led to limited electoral success in Florida.
Jolly may be better positioned to win statewide. A poll released by the James Madison Institute showed him trailing Donalds by four points and Renner by one, with 28% undecided. Supporters such as Rumpf said it’s proof Floridians are open to a possible Gov. Jolly.
But Owens isn’t convinced.
“The odds right now are against him,” he said.
AMERICA FIRST REPUBLICANS DOMINATING PRIMARY POLLS
As for Duncan, the odds may be long, but Taylor said not to count him out.
“Assuming he has a ‘D’ beside his name and the electorate is sufficiently anti-Trump or anti-GOP, as we might expect, he’d have as good a chance as any of the nominees — provided he runs a solid campaign,” Taylor said.
Taylor Millard is a freelance journalist who lives in Virginia.
