Charlie Crist looks to run for Rep. David Jolly’s seat

Joining three other Florida congressmen in seeking to move to the U.S. Senate, Pinellas County Republican David Jolly said Monday he will run in 2016 for the seat being vacated by presidential candidate Marco Rubio. That ruling ordered state lawmakers to redraw eight districts, which the Supreme Court found violated a 2010 constitutional amendment aimed at ending gerrymandering.

The majority opinion said that the Republican-drawn map impermissibly attached a heavily Democratic piece of St. Petersburg to a safely Democratic district across Tampa Bay, ensuring that the district now held by Jolly “was more favorable to the Republican Party”.

He’s joining a Senate field that already includes U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, who announced in May, and Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who announced his campaign on July 15. Patrick Murphy of Jupiter and Alan Grayson, the firebrand liberal from Orlando.

He was first elected from Florida’s 13th Congressional District in Pinellas County, during a special election in March, 2014, to finish the term of the late Congressman C.W. Bill Young.

The race is expected to draw national attention because it gives Democrats a chance to pick up a seat in the Republican-controlled Senate.

Jolly, 42, has thus far positioned himself as a moderate Republican, riling some conservatives when he came out in support of same-sex marriage.

In his campaign statement, Jolly said his run for the U.S. Senate will be on an “unwavering platform” that rejects the “politics of division and class warfare that have defined the current Administration”.

“We will not tolerate failed foreign policies and wavering alliances that leave America vulnerable to a unsafe treaty with Iran, weakness before our enemies and a failed policy to combat ISIS”, Jolly added.

Prior to his time in elected office, Jolly served several roles in the private sector: as vice president of a specialty finance firm, investing in job-creating businesses, and as chief executive officer of Olympus Foundation Management, a Clearwater-based professional services company supporting philanthropy of non-profits and individuals. He married earlier this month, and resides in Indian Shores with his wife, Laura.