Florida's two gubernatorial nominees spent Labor Day weekend campaigning separately across Tampa rather than sharing a stage, and now they can't even agree on why. The Tampa Tiger Bay Club says Republican Byron Donalds was supposed to appear jointly with Democrat David Jolly at the club later this month, only for Donalds to back out. The Donalds campaign says no such joint appearance was ever confirmed in the first place.
According to Creative Loafing Tampa, Jolly said Donalds backed out of a scheduled joint event at the Tampa Tiger Bay Club, while a source with the Donalds campaign countered that his appearance was never confirmed to begin with. The Donalds campaign instead changed plans to have Donalds appear separately, and the campaign said Donalds would not appear at the Tampa Tiger Bay Club at all, offering running mate Bryan Avila in his place. Avila, the former Miami-Dade County Republican state senator and Donalds' running mate, is now set to appear at the club on September 18, while Jolly is scheduled to speak there on September 25.
The dispute unfolded as both campaigns crisscrossed Tampa over Labor Day weekend rather than sharing a platform. Donalds spoke at a veterans event near MacDill Air Force Base, while Jolly attended the West Central Florida Labor Council's Labor Day picnic, with the two nominees making separate appearances in the city rather than the joint one that had reportedly been on the table.
Donalds Accuses Jolly of Running a Stealth Campaign
Donalds accused Jolly of running what he called a stealth campaign, arguing that Jolly is not doing much of anything on the campaign trail. He went further, comparing Jolly's approach to campaigns run by Katie Hobbs, Abigail Spanberger and Joe Biden, according to the same Creative Loafing Tampa report. Donalds also said his own campaign had held events, rallies and Q&As throughout Florida since the primary.
Jolly rejected the claim that he was running a stealth campaign, telling the outlet he had campaigned in Pensacola, Tallahassee, Jacksonville and Miami in about four days. He said the criticism reflected that the Donalds campaign was struggling to find its footing, and added that the Donalds campaign had tried culture-war, tax, gun and immigration attacks against him.
A Debate Standoff Layered on Top of the Forum Dispute
The forum flap comes as the two campaigns are separately negotiating terms for televised debates. Donalds has requested three debates before the general election, and per the report, the two campaigns are in the beginning stages of planning debates that would be held within the next eight weeks.
Jolly said he wanted debates to produce substantive discussion rather than toxicity, and said he preferred a format where voters ask the candidates questions directly. The Tampa Tiger Bay Club, a nonpartisan group that does not endorse candidates, structures its own events so that only club members are permitted to ask questions of appearing candidates, according to the Tampa Tiger Bay Club.
A Race Already Defined by Format Fights
The squabble over who shows up where is not new to this race. Byron Donalds declined to participate in debates against his Republican primary rivals earlier this year, then challenged Jolly to three general election debates in a social media video, as POLITICO Pro reported in July. More recently, Donalds accused Jolly of ducking unscripted encounters during a conservative talk radio interview, a charge Jolly pushed back on by pointing out that Donalds routinely places campaign trackers at his own open public events, according to Florida Politics.
One historical footnote surfaced in the Creative Loafing Tampa report: former Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles famously walked 1,000 miles from Pensacola to Miami during his 1970 U.S. Senate campaign, a stunt long cited in Florida political lore as the standard for retail campaigning across the state's sprawling media markets.
Where the Race Stands Heading Into Fall
The forum dispute plays out against a tightening contest. A mid-August poll from The James Madison Institute showed Donalds leading Jolly by four percentage points, 36% to 32%, down from an eight-point lead in earlier polling, with 28% of voters still undecided, per Newsweek. Donalds won the Republican primary on August 18 with roughly 48% of the vote in a 10-candidate field, defeating Florida Lt. Gov. Jay Collins, while Jolly, a former Republican congressman who registered as a Democrat in April, won the Democratic primary the same day, according to PBS News.
Florida hasn't elected a Democratic governor since 1994, and Republicans have held the governor's mansion continuously since 1998. Should Donalds win in November, he would become the first Black governor in Florida's history and the second Black Republican governor elected nationwide. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is term-limited, ended a yearlong GOP rift by formally endorsing Donalds at a state party forum in Tampa earlier this month, after Donalds defeated DeSantis' preferred primary candidate.
The Creative Loafing Tampa article, authored by Mitch Perry and Florida Phoenix, ran in the outlet's News & Views section as part of its August 27–September 2, 2026 print edition.
