Former President Bill Clinton quoted Scripture while backing Democrat David Jolly for Florida governor, an uphill push to flip a state that has not elected a Democrat to the office in decades.
Clinton stood with Jolly at an interfaith event in Hollywood, Florida, as the Democrat campaigns against Republican Rep. Byron Donalds to replace outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Breitbart News reported the former president cast Jolly as the candidate willing to grind for ordinary Floridians and tied that pitch to a passage from Galatians.
“You need somebody who will get up every morning and just bust a gut trying to do something that will help you. That’s what you need, and I think that’s someone in David Jolly,” Clinton said.
"You need somebody who will get up every morning and just bust a gut trying to do something that will help you. That’s what you need, and I think that’s someone in David Jolly,"
He added that he is “not through trying to make things better,” and told the crowd he did not think they were either.
Clinton framed the race as a test of persistence rather than fatigue. He said Jolly has the background, willingness, ability, and determination to deliver.
“I think we ought to give David Jolly a chance. There’s a big difference between being tired and quitting. That’s why ‘let us not grow weary in doing good’ is one of the Bible’s most important promises,” Clinton said.
"And he has the background, the willingness, the ability, and the determination to get it done. I think we ought to give David Jolly a chance. There’s a big difference between being tired and quitting. That’s why ‘let us not grow weary in doing good’ is one of the Bible’s most important promises,"
He finished the thought with another line from the same chapter: “For in due season we will reap if we do not faint.”
The full passage in Galatians 6, presented via the linked English Standard Version text, centers on sowing to the Spirit, reaping eternal life, and not growing weary of doing good. It warns that God is not mocked and that a person reaps what he sows, corruption from the flesh, eternal life from the Spirit, before urging believers to do good, especially to the household of faith.
Clinton applied the language of endurance and harvest to a partisan campaign. He did not walk the audience through that fuller spiritual context while urging votes for Jolly and Gwen Graham.
“I’m here for him and for Gwen Graham because they’re in this race for what I think are the right reasons, to give every Floridian, without regard to race, politics, religion, or you name it, a chance to build a better life for themselves, their children, their state,” he said.
"And from what I heard tonight, I don’t think you are either. I’m going to have to really practice now, never to refer to David Jolly as Reverend Jolly ever. But I’m here for him and for Gwen Graham because they’re in this race for what I think are the right reasons, to give every Floridian, without regard to race, politics, religion, or you name it, a chance to build a better life for themselves, their children, their state,"
Jolly is a former Republican who is now running as a Democrat. He has campaigned with groups such as the Hillsborough County Democratic Hispanic Caucus while Donalds has been on the trail in places like Panama City.
A recent Stetson University poll showed Donalds leading Jolly by 11 points. Florida’s own voter rolls underscore the structural problem for Democrats: registered Republicans outnumber registered Democrats by more than 1.5 million, per state Division of Elections figures.
Floridians have not elected a Democrat governor since Lawton Chiles won reelection in 1994. Charlie Crist later held the office, but he won and served as a Republican at the time.
DeSantis leaves office after a tenure defined, in part, by resisting heavy-handed coronavirus mandates and emphasizing personal freedom. That record helped cement Florida’s rightward shift. Democrats now want the seat back. Clinton’s appearance was one more attempt to change the math with moral language and a high-profile surrogate.
Clinton told the Hollywood crowd that politicians pick too many fights and that voters need someone who will work for them. He cast Jolly in that role and borrowed biblical promises of reward for those who do not quit.
The verse he chose is not a campaign slogan. In context it calls believers away from fleshly sowing and toward spiritual fruit and care for the faithful. Using it to bless a late-cycle push against a leading Republican congressman puts sacred text in service of a party that has spent a generation losing statewide executive races in Florida.
Donalds holds the poll lead. Republicans hold the registration edge. The last Democrat elected governor in his own right dates to the mid-1990s. Clinton can quote Galatians. He cannot rewrite those numbers from a stage in Hollywood.
Florida voters have heard elite moral lectures before. They keep electing the side that matches their results, not the side that borrows the Bible for a closing argument.
