Email Insights: Duval GOP and Lenny Curry hit Alvin Brown three times in one day

Bankrupt

Wednesday saw a rare feat: a trifecta of emails aiming at Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown from The Duval County Republican Party and the Lenny Curry campaign. In a week that has been surprisingly fast moving in terms of the campaign narrative, the Curry Camp and the Duval Republicans are messaging hard.

The first email on Wednesday, from the Curry campaign, charged that “Democrat Alvin Brown and Boss Allison Tant‘s Attack Squad Are Living in the Land of Make Believe.”

“Democrat Alvin Brown and his new communications team paid for by Florida Democrat Party Boss Allison Tant have a new strategy for their campaign; making claims that have no basis in fact,” attests the email, borrowing the “party boss” formulation from their opponents’ erstwhile Deputy Campaign Manager, Fabien Levy, who used that as one of his standbys.

It takes Brown to task for his “make-believe law” separating city business and official business, which the email suggests is a smokescreen to avoid “Brown’s apparent fear of having more than 2 debates with Lenny Curry.”

“The reporter reminded Brown that in the last 10 days he’d done at least 2 campaign events during official hours, so he was forced to admit he simply didn’t want to answer questions,” the email continued.

Another point brought up in the email: “a press release from Alvin Brown’s attack dogs from the Florida Democrat Party who work for party boss Allison Tant [that] falsely claimed Lenny had not held public events for 2 weeks.”

That claim is countered by Curry’s publicized appearance at a Beaches voter forum, as well as a sojourn to One Spark, in which “it’s been reported that international business leader Jack Welch, an event keynote speaker, encouraged the crowd to support Lenny because of his ‘passion for Jacksonville’.”

In addition to the Curry campaign communique, the Duval GOP did double duty.

The party’s first email, as with the Curry email, lambasted the Mayor for not wanting to talk to Action News Jax, reminding Republicans that Brown refuses to debate on the local news outlet, and using a quote from Paige Kelton to support that claim:

We’re really surprised that the Mayor won’t accept our debate offer. Why shut us out? Why exclude us from this important public service? Perhaps because we’re more aggressive. Or because we hold him accountable. This weekend they reconsidered Channel 4’s offer but not ours. In terms of providing public service, the Mayor’s refusal to debate on our station is not a good thing.
The second email returned to a leit motif of the Curry campaign: that the city’s finances are in shambles. It introduced a new meme, in response to a quote from Brown Communications Director David DeCamp.
“The City’s financial management has been lauded by outside parties for its strength. In fact, the Government Finance Officers Association of the United States and Canada (GFOA) repeatedly awarded a Certificate of Achievement for Excellence in Financial Reporting to the City of Jacksonville for its Comprehensive Annual Financial Report and annual budgets,” DeCamp said.
The Duval GOP didn’t let that stand. In fact, they prefaced this part of the message with a graphic of the bankrupt tycoon from Monopoly.
“The cities of Harrisburg, PA and Stockton, CA each received the same GFOA “Certificate of Achievement” before they went bankrupt. Harrisburg received the award just three years before it declared bankruptcy in 2007. Stockton received the award just four years before it became the largest municipality in U.S. history to file for bankruptcy in 2012,” the Duval Republicans asserted, before presenting the “Brown defense boiled down to its basics.”
“The City of Jacksonville’s shoddy financial accounting isn’t really as shoddy as it looks because the city got an award from the same organization that gave the same award to the now bankrupt cities of Harrisburg, PA and Stockton, CA.”
A brutal day of emails toward the Brown campaign from the Curry side. Of course, Wednesday started off with an email going in the other direction. Clearly, both campaigns are preparing the themes for the post-One Spark PAC mailers.
We have reached out to the Brown campaign for response to the claims in the emails documented in this article. Once that is received, we will provide it.

A.G. Gancarski

A.G. Gancarski has been the Northeast Florida correspondent for Florida Politics since 2014. He writes for the New York Post and National Review also, with previous work in the American Conservative and Washington Times and a 15+ year run as a columnist in Folio Weekly. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter: @AGGancarski



#FlaPol

Florida Politics is a statewide, new media platform covering campaigns, elections, government, policy, and lobbying in Florida. This platform and all of its content are owned by Extensive Enterprises Media.

Publisher: Peter Schorsch @PeterSchorschFL

Contributors & reporters: Phil Ammann, Drew Dixon, Roseanne Dunkelberger, A.G. Gancarski, William March, Ryan Nicol, Jacob Ogles, Cole Pepper, Jesse Scheckner, Drew Wilson, and Mike Wright.

Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @PeterSchorschFL
Phone: (727) 642-3162
Address: 204 37th Avenue North #182
St. Petersburg, Florida 33704