A.G. Gancarski
Just a week ago, as the Jacksonville First Election approached, I was hearing from people regarding the question of whether or not Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown could clear 50 percent against Lenny Curry, Bill Bishop and Omega Allen. There was a school of thought that his campaign was surging at exactly the right time, and that Jacksonville voters were ready to double down on Mayor Brown.
Obviously that didn’t happen. Brown did win the first election; close behind (certainly closer than the public polls forecast, though not in a way that surprised the internal pollsters) was Curry. Five points separated the men, and both campaigns were able, in the aftermath, to say they were running “underdog” campaigns. That meme works fine for an insurgent challenger, but is more problematic for an entrenched incumbent … which led to a lot of opinion recalibration from the chattering classes.
Exhibit A, from the Tampa Bay Times‘ Adam Smith:
Loser of the week
Alvin Brown. The Jacksonville mayor can win a second term, but he had hoped to do it without a runoff. Yes, he came in first in Tuesday’s primary, but the last three mayors of Jacksonville won office after finishing in second place.
This analysis, such as it is, leaves a lot out. It obscures the very different dynamics of First Elections and runoff elections in Jacksonville. In 2011, when Brown (who finished second in the First Election) won the runoff election, it would have been a very different dynamic if Republican favorites Audrey Moran and Rick Mullaney had not knocked each other out of the race. If one of them had stood down, it was very likely that we could have seen two Republicans in the runoff (Brown was considered an afterthought by many early in 2011, as the local political discussion was dominated by the Moran/Mullaney horse race).
And 2003 was won by eventual two-term Republican Mayor John Peyton, who saw his support blunted in the First Election, as he finished second place in a crowded field to Nat Glover. That election saw Peyton battling in the First Election to establish name identification; the second election allowed for a more binary contest.
Undoubtedly, as Smith contends, the mayor “hoped” to win this past Tuesday without a runoff. The same could be said for the Curry campaign, and even the Bishop operation. However, no one with any inside knowledge of the Brown campaign was willing to state that such an outcome was a possibility. There were vague reports that Republicans were “nervous” about Tuesday’s vote, but those Republicans likely were hewing to the UNF poll that had Brown ahead 37-25 with a ton of undecided voters (the bulk of which seemed to go Curry’s way).
Declaring Brown the “loser of the week” based on him failing to outperform every poll available epitomizes the idea of a false tautology. That’s especially given that the comment did not consider the bigger news of the week for the Brown campaign: the 9-9 tie vote on the long-debated Police and Fire Pension Fund revision. Between that and a judge ruling last week voiding the 30-year deal set up in 2001, it is clear that the pension discussion necessarily will take center stage between now and May 19.
In what looks to be a close runoff election, according to a poll we commissioned last week, it is entirely arguable that Brown’s second term hinges on whether he can broker a new deal that a recalcitrant city council and the PFPF can live with — or whether both parties decide to stall out and wait and see which candidate wins the mayoral election.
