Fact Checking Byron Donalds' Claims about David Jolly's Hurricane Tax
By Philip Cardella October 3, 2026
Miami, FL
Tis this season for political ads to be ruining your streaming service that used to be commercial free.
Yay!
Today I wanted to take a look at how these ads work and how we should view them–whether we like the candidate or not.
On September 8th of this year Byron Donalds' campaign started running this ad. A lot.
In it, the Donalds campaign makes three main claims:
- David Jolly is proposing a $1,000 per family Hurricane Tax
- This is supported by a presumably independent study run by Florida State University's Wertheim College of Business
- The tax would be a "Giant Bailout for Big Insurance Companies" as reported by Florida Politics.
There are several problems with the ad. The first has been fact checked by the award winning team at PolitiFact, which found, "The [Donalds' ad called "Disaster"] references a recent study but oversimplifies its findings. It didn’t evaluate Jolly’s plan, instead looking at a Florida House proposal from 2024."
That bill, written by former Florida House member Spencer Roach, a Republican representing parts of Lee, Charlotte and DeSoto counties in Florida's 76th Congressional District, and Hillary Cassel who started 2024 as a Democrat representing Florida's 101st District in Florida's House of Representatives and switched to the Republican party was introduced Baker (R), Bartleman (D), Botana (R), Cross (D), Eskamani (D), Garcia (R), Hunschofsky (D) and Tant (D). The bill, formally called Windstorm Coverage by Citizens Property Insurance Corporation died in the Insurance & Banking Subcommittee on March 8, 2024.
The bill, whatever its virtues or flaws, was a bipartisan effort created by a group of people, none of whom were named David Jolly.
FSU's Wertheim College of Business did an analysis of the proposal and released in in August of this year and concluded that while the bill had some merits to fixing Florida's worst in the nation insurance rates, in the event of a catastrophic event where the State's reserves were inadequate to address the cost it might cost Floridians as much as $1000 per year.
David Jolly is not mentioned in the analysis.
Jolly does have a plan that's related to this proposal. According to Politifact:
Jolly’s plan would convert the [emergency] fund into a primary insurer for wind coverage. He says it would need to have a minimum of $32 billion. (Flood insurance is typically a separate policy through the federal government and wouldn’t be part of this fund.)
Jolly has not released detailed plans for how his fund would work. He told PolitiFact that Floridians would not need to purchase a separate wind policy, and the state fund could potentially use private insurance carriers to underwrite and service claims.
In other words, David Jolly has politcospeak making a vague promise to fix arguably Florida's most vexing and pressing problem. That's not at all the same as a proposed tax, especially a tax for $1000 per family.
In a different fact check Florida Daily concludes:
The $1,000 figure comes from a catastrophic-loss scenario involving an expansion of Citizens Property Insurance, not from a provision contained in Jolly’s insurance proposal.
The study did not conclude that Florida families would automatically pay $1,000 every year.
Florida currently allows state-backed insurance entities to impose assessments on policyholders following severe financial losses, and lawmakers could authorize some type of assessment when designing Jolly’s proposed fund.
The ultimate financial risk to taxpayers and insurance customers therefore would depend on several factors that have not yet been determined, including the fund’s reserves, reinsurance protection, hurricane losses and the financing provisions adopted by the Florida Legislature.
In other words, Byron Donalds' ad is, to put it politely, misleading.
That's not my personal favorite part, however. My favorite part is Donalds' ad citing Florida Politics' analysis on September 8, 2026 in saying it was a giant bailout for big insurance.
Here's the key language from Florida Politics:
“My Bring Down The Bill Plan will slash insurance costs for Floridians and make life more affordable by protecting successful existing reforms, boosting competition, and attacking remaining costs that drive up premiums. Meanwhile, my opponent’s insurance plans would institute a $1,000 hurricane tax on Florida families and bail out big insurance companies. David Jolly has never worked in the real world, and I have — my plan will drive down costs for Floridians.”
That's a quote from Byron Donalds. The only place in the article that mentions "a giant bailout for big insurance" is literally a quote from Byron Donalds, yet, the Donalds' ad makes it seem like it was Florida Politics who made the statement.
While no one should mistake David Jolly's vague ideas as an actual plan (which means Jolly is also being misleading), Byron Donalds' ad attacking Jolly's nebulous ideas as something concrete and rejected by FSU and Florida Daily is, to be very polite, misleading.
Not a great look for either man. I leave it to you, dear reader, to determine which is worse.
Samantha Putterman | PolitiFact
Florida Daily
