David Jolly wants Florida voters to see him as the reasonable Democrat — the former Republican who supposedly represents a more moderate path for a state that has moved decisively to the right.

But look past the branding, and the picture gets considerably less moderate.

Jolly, a former Republican congressman who became a Democrat, is running for governor while sharing the top of the Democratic ticket with state Senate candidate Angie Nixon, an actual Democratic Socialists of America member who has faced questions over her own socialist politics.

Jolly does not formally identify as a DSA member.

His record, however, gives Republicans plenty of ammunition to argue that the label may matter less than the policies.

Start with the Second Amendment.

After a 2022 shooting at a Virginia Walmart, Jolly went on MSNBC and described the failure to address gun violence as “one of the greatest shames of modern American culture.”

But he went considerably further than simply calling for improved enforcement or better mental-health resources.

“How do we crush the culture of guns on demand in the United States that is resulting in the tragedy and loss of lives?”

That language is hard to square with the image of a moderate Democrat in Florida — a state where millions of law-abiding residents own firearms and where the Second Amendment remains a central political issue.

The comparison to DSA’s own rhetoric is striking. In a 2018 piece, the organization described the Second Amendment as a “threat to us all” and called for dismantling its current constitutional protections.

The difference is apparently one of branding.

Jolly’s Education Agenda Raises Another Red Flag

The same pattern appears in education.

Jolly has argued that schools should teach students about racism and what he described as the nation's history of slavery, including invoking the controversial “three-fifths” language in discussing America's founding.

“The most important thing schools can do is teach students to think critically, and that includes providing them authentic, honest storytelling about our history, about the influence of racism.”

Teaching history honestly is one thing.

But conservatives have spent years fighting against ideological instruction in classrooms that turns American history into a political morality play rather than teaching students the facts, context and complexity necessary to understand the country.

DSA, meanwhile, openly promotes socialist-oriented approaches to education.

Then there is school choice — one of the biggest issues separating Florida Republicans from the traditional Democratic education establishment.

Jolly has proposed eliminating for-profit charter schools from the public education system and imposing additional restrictions on schools accepting vouchers.

He insisted he is not seeking to “kill choice.”

Instead, he said he wants to “put new rules on the voucher schools” and require private and public schools to operate under essentially the same rules and resources.

For Florida families who have fought for the ability to choose where and how their children are educated, that sounds less like expanding freedom and more like putting Washington-style — or Tallahassee-style — guardrails around it.

And DSA's position is even more explicit: the organization has characterized school choice as a vehicle for segregation and argued for protecting traditional public education.

Again, the ideological overlap is difficult to miss.

And Then There Are the Taxes

Jolly has also signaled opposition to making Trump's tax cuts permanent.

Asked about provisions including the no-tax-on-tips policy, Jolly said that if he were running for federal office, he would favor reversing many of those provisions.

That puts him at odds with a central Republican argument: let working Americans keep more of what they earn rather than sending more money through Washington's machinery.

DSA, unsurprisingly, advocates significantly higher taxation of wealthy Americans.

None of this means Jolly is formally a DSA member.

It does mean Florida voters have every reason to examine what he actually supports rather than simply accepting the “moderate” label attached to his campaign.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds has made that argument repeatedly, calling Jolly a “Trojan horse for the Democrat Socialists of America.”

At a campaign stop in Sarasota, Donalds went straight after Jolly's position on transgender issues involving children.

“Make no mistake about it. This is a guy who says it’s still ok to transgender our kids and to steal their puberty.”

Donalds argued that voters had already rejected those policies in 2024 and said Americans had made their position clear about protecting traditional distinctions between boys and girls.

He also went after Jolly over his support for former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases chief Anthony Fauci during the COVID-19 era.

According to Donalds, while Gov. Ron DeSantis moved Florida toward reopening and restoring personal freedoms, Jolly left for Pennsylvania, where COVID restrictions remained more stringent, and continued criticizing DeSantis through CNN and MSNBC.

Jolly has also said he wants to apologize to the world on Florida's behalf over the state's so-called “culture wars.”

For a conservative state that has become a national symbol of resistance to progressive cultural politics, that tells voters something important about where Jolly believes Florida should be headed.

His campaign may prefer the word “moderate.”

Florida Republicans are looking at the policies.

And that is where the real story is.

A candidate does not become moderate simply by saying he is one. If the agenda includes restricting gun rights, tightening school-choice programs, reversing tax cuts, embracing progressive approaches to race and education, and supporting transgender policies Republicans have spent years fighting, voters are entitled to judge the record for themselves.

Donalds put it bluntly:

“David Jolly’s fake moderate act falls apart under even basic scrutiny — he supports key planks of the DSA’s platform and he’s eager to run alongside an avowed socialist in Angie Nixon.”

Florida has spent years moving in the opposite direction from the progressive model Jolly appears prepared to revive.

The choice facing voters is therefore bigger than one candidate's political rebranding. It is whether Florida remains a state where parents control their children's education, law-abiding citizens retain their constitutional rights, workers keep more of their paychecks, and government stays out of people's lives — or whether the socialist wing of the Democratic Party gets another chance to reshape the Sunshine State.

Floridians already know what side of that fight they have chosen. The question now is whether they will recognize the “moderate” disguise before it is too late.