Mitch Perry
David Jolly says he’s excited to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives, but confesses he’s still considering entering the race for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Florida in 2016.
“I would be happy to see the field develop in a way that there was a candidate that I knew I could fully support,” he told Florida Politics on Wednesday. “Where the field is today, I don’t see that, and so I’m just being patient, waiting to see who else considers getting in.”
It’s obvious Jolly isn’t enamored with the only Republican to enter the race so far: Jacksonville-area U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, who scored a perfect 100 score from the American Conservative Union this week. Or with Lt. Gov.r Carlos Lopez-Cantera, who appears to be gearing up as well for a run at the Senate seat being vacated by Marco Rubio.
Jolly said Jeff Atwater was a candidate he could easily get behind. The state’s chief financial officer, though, ripped up the GOP’s script on succession when he announced last month he wouldn’t run for the seat. Several other name Republicans followed to say they, too, wouldn’t enter the contest.
That’s why Jolly remains a viable candidate, though he’s only been serving in the House slightly more than a year. He won his seat in one of the most intense, hard-fought congressional special elections ever. More than $12 million total was spent among the candidates, the political parties, and interested third-party groups based in Washington.
Sounding honestly conflicted, Jolly said he’s turned off by politicians who campaign for one job and begin looking at the next office once they win an election. “I never ran for the House to consider what I’d run for next,” he said. “I ran for the House because I love the House.”
He said he listens to the people in his district and that they’re approaching him saying they don’t want him to run for Senate. “Most people are saying that because they appreciate what we’re doing,” he said, joking that some might be saying that because they don’t like his politics.
It was a busy day in the House on Wednesday.
Jolly voted for a bill banning abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy in a party-line vote. Fewer than a handful of Republican opposed it, a different story from January. Then he was part of a group of Republicans who objected to the bill because it required rape victims to report it to police before they can have the procedure. That provision was removed but as a compromise the bill now requires rape victims to receive counseling and face a 48-hour waiting period before being allowed an abortion after 20 weeks.
Jolly said he “questioned” the inclusion of that provision. “I think we might be overcomplicating the situation that we don’t need to overcomplicate.” He said the language could change when it goes to the Senate, though President Obama is expected to veto it if it reaches his desk.
Jolly also voted with the overwhelming majority of the House to OK legislation to end the federal government’s bulk collection of telephone records.
Last week, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit held that a provision of the USA Patriot Act, known as Section 215, cannot be legitimately interpreted to allow the bulk collection of domestic calling records. Jolly said he agreed with that ruling, saying that the collection by the National Security Agency of metadata charting telephone calls by Americans was a violation of due process. The bill passed by the House also would bar permitting bulk collection of records using other tools such as so-called national security letters, a kind of administrative subpoena.
“There’s a right balance between liberty and national security,” he said. “(Senate Majority Leader Mitch) McConnell wants a pure extension of 215. Rand Paul wants to abolish the whole thing, and that’s something I don’t support.”
Back to the possible Senate run. When you read this last sentence, it would seem very surprising if Jolly pulled the switch in July and said he would be abandoning his Pinellas County congressional seat.
“After everything that our community went through in the special election, I ran on the promise that Pinellas County needed somebody in the House capable of being effective on Day One. That was the promise that I made, that was the promise that I ran on. And I’m somebody who intends to keep promises. So we’ve got a long ways to go before I would consider running for Senate in this process.”
