Mr. Jolly opposed the big 3, global warming alarmism, ObamaCare and amnesty. Had he not, he would've been indistinguishable from a democrat:
3/13/14, "David Jolly Proves GOP Can Win Swing Districts by Opposing Amnesty," Breitbart, Tony Lee
"Establishment Republicans have said that GOP candidates cannot win races in swing districts, especially against strong Democrats, by firmly opposing amnesty.
In what could be a bellwether for November, Republican David Jolly won a special election House race in Florida's 13th congressional district on Tuesday night by doing just that in a district that was not favorable to him
.
President Barack Obama
won it twice
and his chief opponent, Alex Sink, the last Florida Democrat to win statewide,
won it
in her failed gubernatorial campaign
in 2010.
In addition, when Jolly was trailing in the polls by three points, the Republican establishment started to throw him under the bus the weekend before election night.
As Daniel Horowitz of the Madison Project observed, the "notion that we must support amnesty to remain viable is clearly laid to waste by this victory in a Florida swing district" and "if running as a conservative on the issues, including the issue of immigration, is a pathway to victory in an Obama +4 district, imagine the results in a district Romney carried by 10, 20, or 30 points."
"But don’t expect the wizards of smart within the Republican Party establishment to ever consider that the reality of the immigration issue might be in conflict with their conventional wisdom," he pessimistically wrote. "There is too much money invested in that fallacious premise."
During the campaign, Sink was for amnesty and even said the country needed it so people like her could hire cheap labor.
“Immigration reform is important in our country,” Sink said. “We have a lot of employers over on the beaches that rely upon workers and especially in this high-growth environment, where are you going to get people to work to clean our hotel rooms or do our landscaping? We don’t need to put those employers in a position of hiring undocumented and illegal workers.”
Jolly called Sink's comments "disgusting," and he was also the only candidate of the three (a potential libertarian spoiler got 5% of the vote and failed to tip the race to Sink) in the race who was against amnesty.
“We are a loving and caring nation, but we are also a nation of laws, and it is important that those who have broken the law recognize that," Jolly said at a debate. And he also ran a commercial that declared that he was for "stronger borders. Not amnesty.”
As Breitbart News has reported, despite the efforts of the bipartisan permanent political class to ram through amnesty, two national polls (ABC News-Washington Post, NBC News-Wall Street Journal) in recent weeks have found that Americans are more likely to vote against candidates who support amnesty than for them." via Lucianne
================================
Global warming profiteers attacked Jolly. (In 2012 alone $1 billion a day was invested in the notion of "global warming.")
3/12/14, "Alex Sink Rides Global Warming Alarmism to Surprise Congressional Defeat in FL-13," Forbes, James Taylor
Having just moved into Florida’s U.S. House
District 13, I was shocked these past two weeks to discover how global
warming became the central issue dominating television’s political
commercials. Granted, I haven’t been watching much television, as moving
from one house to another has been nearly a full-time job.
Nevertheless, it seemed I couldn’t go 15 minutes into my limited viewing
schedule without seeing the same Sierra Club/League of Conservation Voters commercial
excoriating Jolly for being a global warming skeptic. I honestly can’t
recall seeing any other political commercials these past two weeks,
either pro-Sink or pro-Jolly. However, I must have seen the global
warming commercial at least a dozen times.
Most campaign analysts and all pre-election
polls named Sink the favorite in the race. Sink held statewide office as
Florida Chief Financial Officer from 2007-2010. In 2010, one of the
bloodiest political years for Democrats ever, Sink came within a hair of
winning Florida’s gubernatorial election. Sink had a tremendous name
recognition advantage over Jolly, a former lobbyist who nobody had even
heard of six months ago. Sink’s campaign outspent Jolly. And Sink
decided to counter anti-Obamacare sentiment by defining Jolly as a
scientifically dangerous climate change skeptic.
.
.
Jolly didn’t even fight back against the constant global warming political onslaught. He never answered the Sierra Club/League of Conservation Voters attacks with a defense of his views on global warming, energy and the environment. He simply let Sink’s supporters sink their political war chest on what turned out to be a loser political strategy. Maybe Sink, despite all her advantages, was unavoidably going to suffer the political upset, anyway. Then again, maybe not.
What we do know is a well-known Democrat who had recently served in statewide office lost to a lobbyist running his first political campaign after global warming became the most visible campaign advertising issue in the weeks leading up to the election.
Interestingly enough, the Florida District 13
election occurred just as the Senate Democratic Climate Action Task
Force wrapped up an all-night session in which 30 Democratic senators
filibustered to protest the Democratic-controlled Senate’s failure to
pass a carbon tax. Democratic U.S. Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark
Pryor (D-AR), Mark Begich (D-AK) and Kay Hagan (D-NC), all of whom face
difficult reelection contests in the upcoming November elections, stayed
conspicuously away from the high-profile hijinks.
.
.
.
================================
Jolly favored strong borders and rule of law, opposed amnesty:
3/12/14, "The Overlooked Factor in the FL-13 Victory," Daniel Horowitz, Madison Project
=================================
More on David Jolly:
The GOP establishment didn't want David Jolly, they tried to get 3 others to run. Boehner didn't want him, Jeb Bush didn't want him, Florida sicko power broker Jack Latvala supported an establishment candidate against Jolly in the primary which he won easily but was practically broke going into the gen. election. Boehner's office kindly feeds outlets like Politico:
3/7/14, "National GOP turns on Florida candidate," Politico, Alex Eisenstadt
"Jolly, a longtime aide to Young who left Capitol Hill in 2007 to start a lobbying career, wasn’t the Republican establishment’s first choice. In fact, GOP officials sought out three other prospects, eager to find a candidate with a higher and more appealing profile than they believed Jolly possessed.
After longtime GOP Rep. Bill Young died in October, House Speaker John Boehner called Rick Baker, a popular former mayor of St. Petersburg, and pressed him to run for the vacant seat. The Baker courtship didn’t stop there: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush also pushed the former mayor to run, according to two sources. (Bush has since gotten behind Jolly, appearing in TV ads calling him “the best candidate to go to Congress.”)
After mulling it over for a few days, Baker turned them down. By that time, Jolly’s name had emerged as a possible candidate. But national Republicans went after two other possibilities — former Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard and Pinellas County Sheriff Bob Gualtieri — both of whom also declined. That left Jolly to face off against state Rep. Kathleen Peters and one other candidate in the Republican primary.
As soon as the GOP primary began, problems emerged. State Sen. Jack Latvala, a powerful local powerbroker, bypassed Jolly and threw his support to Peters. And in a bizarre twist, Young’s family was divided: The late congressman’s widow, Beverly, backed Jolly while his son, Billy, was behind Peters.
Jolly won the mid-January primary easily. But his campaign entered the general election nearly broke — and, according to multiple sources, lacking a clear plan to catch up to Sink in the cash race. Jolly hadn’t hired a finance director, and some Republicans grumbled that he was reluctant to make fundraising calls.
Republicans grew worried. According to two sources familiar with the matter, NRCC officials pressed the Jolly campaign on whether it had come up with a blueprint to address the fundraising problems and counter the looming Democratic attacks on his lobbying career.
The Jolly camp response was dismissive: We’ve got it under control, staffers told them.
Unconvinced, the NRCC in late January dispatched a finance staffer to Florida to help the candidate fill his coffers. Soon after that, the committee sent three additional aides to the state to help Jolly’s team in a variety of ways.
With Jolly’s campaign basically insolvent, Democrats began pounding him on the airwaves. In the three weeks following the GOP primary, Sink and her Democratic allies outspent the Republican side nearly two-to-one on advertising. Many of the Democratic spots would echo an attack line that the party would use throughout the race: Don’t elect a D.C. lobbyist as your next congressman.
One ad
from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee portrayed a
suit-clad Jolly imitator walking from a K Street office to the Capitol.
“So little gets done for us, while the special interests have lobbyists
like David Jolly. He’s what’s wrong with Washington,” the narrator said.
To date, Jolly has raised $1 million to Sink’s $2.5 million. National Republicans say it’s hard to fathom how a candidate with deep connections to the D.C. influence world — and one who’s running in such a high-profile race — has struggled to draw donations.
Jolly’s lack of cash has left him dependent on outside conservative groups over which he lacked control — including the NRCC and Karl Rove-founded American Crossroads — to do much of his bidding. The NRCC spot that Jolly distanced himself from, to the consternation of GOP officials, criticized Sink for using a state plane for personal travel. Washington Republicans believed it was an effective attack; Jolly suggested it wasn’t fair game, saying there was more “nuance” to Sink’s conduct than the ad claimed.
Some of the ads that Jolly’s campaign produced were done on the cheap: One showed him standing in front of an obviously fake backdrop of the Florida coastline.
Mike Fasano, a popular former GOP state representative from nearby Pasco County, said it’s surprising, given the Republican candidate’s problems, that Jolly might still win.
“It’s not been run as I’ve seen other campaigns been run,” Fasano said. “I think he was probably getting bad advice from whoever he was getting advice from — his consultant, his campaign manager, whoever.”
Addressing a small group of reporters Wednesday, Jolly admitted his campaign lacked the money to defend himself adequately on the airwaves.
“Look, I’m a first-time candidate. I don’t come from personal wealth. I don’t come from family wealth,” he said. Sink “brought to her campaign statewide name recognition and a national party that clearly promised they’d put all the fundraising resources behind it.”...
Behind the scenes, his campaign has caused grief for Republican leaders in Washington. The NRCC has spent nearly $2 million in the race, precious resources that could be used to help other candidates this year. But on at least two occasions, Jolly declined to say he would back Boehner as speaker.
After the second response, Jolly sent out a tweet clarifying that, indeed, he would back Boehner.
.
That wasn’t enough for the speaker’s allies.
“After all that was done to help Jolly, his noncommittal statements on if he supports the speaker made Boehner advisers furious,” said one Republican official close to Boehner’s operation.
If Jolly has a strength as a candidate, it’s his accessibility. While Sink’s public events are tightly controlled, Jolly takes any questions thrown his way."...
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David Jolly was even said to be a "tea party candidate" and he still won:
""I tend to vote Democrat,'' she said. "I believe the tea party candidate, David Jolly, would be a disaster.''...
3/11/14, "David Jolly has lead in close Pinellas congressional race," Tampa Bay Times, Leary, Wiseman, Puente
===============================
3/11/14, "Victory in Florida Bolsters Midterm Hopes for Republicans," NY Times, Lizette Alvarez, Clearwater, Florida
.
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