A.G. Gancarski
With 16 Jacksonville City Council seats up for grabs on Tuesday (three candidates ran unopposed), there were obviously winners and losers to be found across the board. This post will evaluate the five At Large races, looking at who might have outperformed expectations and who didn’t achieve what seemed possible before the election. A separate post will evaluate the district races.
At Large Group 1: Coming into this election, incumbent Democrat Kim Daniels seemed snake-bitten. She started off Early Voting with a scuffle at a polling place with another candidate, and if she ever was vulnerable, it would have been in this election. However, she finished first, with 35 percent of the vote, ahead of Chamber favorite Anna Brosche, who had endorsements from the entire business community, a strong résumé, and support from socially liberal Republicans and Democrats for her stance on the Human Rights Ordinance. She supports it. That’s where the problem lies for many socially conservative Republicans, who are adamantly opposed to it — almost in a single-issue voter way.
Many prominent Republicans have mentioned their disquiet with Brosche, and have said that they will support Daniels in the runoff election.
“I am going to vote for Kim Daniels,” one enthusiastically told me. “Bottom line is, I disagree with her on many issues but I can count on her to do the right thing.” Referring to Daniels’ opponent, Brosche, he said, “It’s a sad day in the Republican Party when we put up candidates without biblical principles.”
Brosche has been quieter about her support of the HRO. Elephants have long memories, though, and so do GOP activists, so despite her credentials and support from the business community, Brosche may have an uphill battle in the runoff against the only “demonbuster” on the City Council.
At Large Group 2: Democrat John Crescimbeni won this race outright, despite a bizarre attack mailer being sent out against him in the final days of the campaign. He beat a well-financed Chamber Republican and a poorly financed Christian conservative whose house apparently went into foreclosure during the campaign. The iconoclastic incumbent has a sense of humor. Check out this picture of his office door, taken the day after the election, hours before the Democrat voted against the PFPF Pension deal his own mayor put forth on the floor of the city council. (H/T: Abel Harding)
At Large Group 3: Former Mayor Tommy Hazouri looked like he was going to walk away with this, but an African-American Democrat named Mincy Pollock just wouldn’t go away, needling Hazouri on issues ranging from his age to his 2008 Duval County School Board vote against the renaming of Nathan Bedford Forrest High School. Bad blood exists on both sides; Pollock’s people contend Hazouri tried to get him out of the race, and Hazouri people have claimed that Pollock tried to cut a deal to exit the race.
Hazouri is in the runoff against Geoff Youngblood, a family-values flag-pin conservative who seems to be doing outreach of his own, even congratulating Daniels on her Facebook comment thread for making the runoff. It’s said both Youngblood and Hazouri are courting Pollock to take them to black churches to make the sale.
At Large Group 4: Greg Anderson won this handily as expected against nominal Democratic opposition in the form of Juanita Powell-Williams. He is a conservative that Chamber and church folks can roll with. He seems like someone who will be in the mayoral discussion in 2019, assuming Lenny Curry does not beat the incumbent Democrat, who would be term-limited out at that point.
At Large Group 5: One of the smartest, most principled candidates in any race this cycle, Republican Michelle Tappouni, who hit every forum, had business endorsements and tons of lobbying experience, and a socially liberal stand on the Human Rights Ordinance, was knocked out of the runoff by Republican Sam Newby. He had no money but who had support from the social conservatives in the Duval GOP. He will go on to the runoff to lose by 20 points to Democrat Ju’Coby Pittman, a black woman who heads up the Clara White Mission in Jacksonville.
