Former Congressmen and one-time U.S. Senate rivals David Jolly (R-Belleair Bluffs) and Patrick Murphy (D-Jupiter) launched their town hall tour in 2017 to pull back the curtain on Washington and shine a light on the inside reasons why D.C. is in a state of chaos and dysfunction.

The bipartisan tour, titled “Why Gridlock Rules Washington and How We Can Solve the Crisis,” started in Florida but quickly expanded to include stops at some of our nation’s most prestigious schools, including Harvard and Georgetown.
During their town halls, Jolly and Murphy discuss opportunities for bipartisan leadership, how to build political consensus, and to demonstrate that even in times of disagreement on solutions to our country’s most divisive issues, those disagreements need not divide us as a people.

While serving in Congress, Jolly and Murphy found ways to work together on seemingly intractable issues of responsible debt reduction, climate change and the environment, public safety, federal firearm policies, and campaign finance reform. For nearly a year, the two also faced off as opponents in a U.S. Senate race with Jolly and Murphy both seeking their party’s respective nomination.

In Congress, Murphy, a Democrat, represented a Republican-leaning district in South Florida, while Jolly, a Republican, represented a Democratic-leaning district on Florida’s Gulf Coast.