Melissa Ross
Standing in the shadow of the city’s Tillie Fowler Memorial, a bipartisan group of female supporters endorsed incumbent Mayor Alvin Brown for re-election, saying Brown kept his promises and has empowered women and men alike to succeed.
The group included former WNBA President and Generation W founder Donna Orender and Brown’s former Chief Administrative Officer Karen Bowling. Bowling is also the former CEO of Solantic and a close confidant of Gov. Rick Scott. She spoke first, highlighting the Brown team’s recurrent campaign theme of bipartisanship and high-profile GOP endorsements.
“I’m here to tell you that Alvin Brown is a mayor who gets it. This mayor understands that families are working harder than ever, and he understands that more households than ever are now headed by women. To deliver for Jacksonville women, Alvin Brown worked tirelessly across party lines. I’m a proud Republican, and I’m voting for Alvin Brown because he’s exactly the fighter Jacksonville needs,” Bowling said.
Orender not only ran the WNBA but founded GenW, Northeast Florida’s premiere women’s leadership event.
“I so believe that when women succeed, Jacksonville succeeds,” Orender said. “He’s exactly the get-things-done kind of mayor Jacksonville deserves. High school graduation rates are up, and the unemployment rate is down. And Alvin Brown delivers for Jacksonville’s women.”
The late Tillie Fowler was a Northeast Florida political powerhouse who represented Jacksonville in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1993 to 2001 and became one of the top-ranking women in the Republican Party. The memorial erected in her honor along the city’s Northbank Riverwalk gave the event something of a feminist backdrop.
The crowd of women supporters also included former news anchor and now Jacksonville City Council candidate Joyce Morgan. Morgan is in a tight runoff race for the city’s District 1 seat against Republican Mike Anania.
“I’ve appointed women in key positions in my administration and am always focused on supporting them in their efforts,” Brown said. “Women need to be empowered, part of the team. If you’re going to have a great city you’ve got to have women in key leadership positions.”
According to a recent measure of the race taken by St. Pete Polls, Brown leads challenger Lenny Curry among women 51 percent to 44 percent. However, Curry has a 49 percent to 48 percent advantage with men. Both candidates are scrapping hard for every last vote leading into Jacksonville’s May 19 runoff election.
