In a state that has drifted steadily rightward over eight years, Democrat David Jolly is seeking Florida's governorship and framing the effort not as ordinary partisan ambition but as a defense of democratic institutions themselves — invoking the post-Watergate reckoning of 1974 as a moral compass for the current moment. His candidacy asks whether a single election, in the right place at the right time, can interrupt a political tide that has seemed inexorable. Florida, now the adopted home of the sitting president, has become the unlikely stage for a test of whether Democratic optimism in 202