LAUDERHILL, Fla. — The race for Florida governor is heating up.

The Democratic nominee, former Republican U.S. Rep. David Jolly, made a stop in in South Florida on Thursday.

It comes a day after his Republican challenger, U.S. Rep. Byron Donalds, traveled to Texas to speak at the GOP midterm convention.

For those who buy into polling, it’s a toss-up race and there’s an interesting trend: the partisan divide looks to be much more significant than any racial or ethnic divide, this time.

Jolly on Thursday was at a Caribbean restaurant in Lauderhill on the same day he announced his Black leadership team. Polling shows Jolly with a solid lead among Black voters, yet he faces an opponent with the potential to be Florida’s first Black governor.

Asked whether race is a factor, Jolly said, “I hope it’s not.”

“I hope that that the candidates are judged on their policies,” he said.

Donalds, at President Donald Trumps’s convention this week also downplays race as a campaign factor.

“We’re not going to have Democrat socialism run our state,” he told the crowd.

Donalds has campaigned hard on conservative principles and Republican talking points.

He and Jolly both say they want to grow Florida’s powerhouse economy. Both agree affordability is the biggest election issue. They have major differences, though, on how to get there.

“Republicans have controlled Tallahassee for 30 years and if they could fix homeowners’ insurance or the delivery of health care, or if they could fix a public education system that’s been abandoned, they would,” Jolly said. “But they haven’t.”

Local 10 News spoke with Jolly on a wide range of other issues, including the Hope Florida scandal ― which Jolly says he will reopen the investigation on.

You can watch the entire thing on “This Week in South Florida” at 11 a.m. on Sunday.

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