Byron Donalds Cost of Living Taxes Florida

Byron Donalds's Ad Says David Jolly's Insurance Plan Costs Every Florida Family $1,000 'Every Single Year.' The Study Behind It Never Looked at Jolly's Plan.

Byron Donalds's 'hurricane tax' ad says Jolly's homeowners insurance plan would cost $1,000 per family every year. PolitiFact found the study it relies on examined a different 2024 proposal, and the $1,000 a year was a temporary fee in one catastrophic-storm scenario — not a permanent yearly bill.

MAGA Report Cards · Sep 26, 2026

Florida homeowners pay the highest insurance prices in the country, mostly because of hurricanes. Both candidates for governor have plans to fix it. So Byron Donalds has put money behind a TV ad telling voters that his Democratic opponent, David Jolly, wants to hit them with a "hurricane tax."

The ad, released September 8, says Jolly's plan would cost "$1,000, per Florida family, every single year," raising what people pay for home, car and renters insurance.

PolitiFact looked at where that number came from. The ad, it found, "oversimplifies" a study that never examined Jolly's plan at all.

What the study actually said

The ad points to an August 26 study that Florida State University researchers did for the Legislature's research office. Donalds's campaign shared it with PolitiFact, since it isn't public.

Three problems:

It wasn't about Jolly's plan. The researchers studied a 2024 Florida House proposal to move all residential wind coverage into Citizens, the state-backed insurer. Jolly's plan is something different: turning the state's hurricane catastrophe fund into the primary insurer for wind.
The $1,000 was one scenario. It came from a scenario in which a catastrophic storm wipes out the public insurer's reserves, and Florida law then allows emergency fees on almost every insurance policy in the state to refill them.
It wasn't permanent. In that scenario, Floridians would pay the fee — about $1,000 a year — only "for a limited time." PolitiFact put it plainly: "the study doesn't say it's a definite, yearly outcome."

Floridians could face similar fees under Jolly's plan if the same kind of disaster hit and his fund followed the same rules as Citizens. But, PolitiFact wrote, "none of that is guaranteed." The ad turned a possible, temporary fee after a catastrophe into a bill that arrives every year for every family.

Jolly's plan has real questions. The ad didn't ask them.

The fact-check doesn't let Jolly off the hook either. Experts told PolitiFact they doubt his fund could cut premiums by the 60% to 70% he promises. They also asked how the fund would be paid for and kept afloat when storms are unpredictable. Those are fair questions for voters to hear.

But Donalds didn't make that case. He took a number from a study of someone else's proposal, stripped out the conditions and put "every single year" on it. WTSP in Tampa summed it up in its headline: "The number comes with a lot of fine print."

A pattern in the ads backing Donalds

This is at least the third time an attack on Jolly from Donalds or his allies hasn't held up. We've reported on the ad claiming Jolly wants higher taxes on your tips, overtime and Social Security, in a state that doesn't tax any of them. And on the ad from a PAC backing Donalds that cut a sentence in half to claim Jolly backs "gender changing surgeries on kids", when Jolly was quoting someone else's grandfather.

The bottom line

Byron Donalds's TV ad says David Jolly's insurance plan would cost "$1,000, per Florida family, every single year." PolitiFact found the study behind that number examined a different, 2024 proposal. The $1,000 came from one scenario in which a catastrophic storm drains the state insurer's reserves and Floridians pay emergency fees for a limited time. The study never said it would be a permanent, every-year cost.