Miami
FLORIDA David Jolly brings Republican school board member into ad targeting Byron Donalds
With less than four weeks before Election Day in Florida, the Democrat released a spot featuring Kelly Mason of the Collier County School Board. The message appears aimed at Republican voters who previously backed Ron DeSantis.
David Jolly has rolled out a new campaign ad in the closing stretch of Florida’s race for governor, sharpening his argument against Republican rival Byron Donalds.
As reported by Florida Politics, the ad features Kelly Mason, a member of the Collier County School Board who had sued Donalds after a confrontation at Seed to Table in Naples on Aug. 23, 2022. That was the day Donalds won the Republican nomination to defend his congressional seat and Mason advanced in a school board race. Both later won in November.
The outlet said the lawsuit was later dropped, but the episode has resurfaced during a gubernatorial contest that some polls describe as too close to call. Mason’s role in the ad appears designed to give cover to voters who supported Gov. Ron DeSantis in the past but may now consider Jolly.
In the ad, titled Mason Strong, Mason identifies herself as a DeSantis voter who is now backing Jolly for governor. She also says she knows Byron and Erika Donalds well and ties the dispute to earlier disagreements involving charter school management.
Florida Politics said the 2022 clash was connected to earlier litigation dating back to the period when Mason, Donalds and Erika Donalds were involved with Mason Classical Academy. In Mason’s lawsuit, she alleged that Donalds aggressively cornered her while her then-husband and two children were present, and said he could crush her or finish her. She argued in that filing that the encounter caused an immediate fear of bodily harm.
The conversation was captured on video and later released while Donalds was seeking re-election to Congress, the report added. In the footage, the two can be heard shouting about the lawsuits.
At the time, Donalds said he wanted to address the litigation face-to-face when he saw Mason at Seed to Table, adding that he would defend his wife and family. Mason said then that he was threatening her and pressuring her to drop the lawsuits.
Sources
About this piece. Written by El Notero with AI assistance, from reporting published by the outlet cited above. El Notero did no original reporting on this story.
