A.G. Gancarski
Former Jacksonville Mayor Tommy Hazouri isn’t in danger of losing votes to his Republican opponent, social conservative Geoff Youngblood, in the progressive Jacksonville enclave of Five Points. Hazouri, though, has to make a sale to those younger voters nonetheless, many of whom were pre-embryonic when Hazouri was mayor.
An avuncular figure whose opponent in the First Election, Mincy Pollock, famously needled Hazouri by saying that he was his grandmother’s favorite mayor. Hazouri has to overcome the generation gap if he wants to score the widely expected victory against Youngblood in the At Large Council Group 3 race.
Trips like the one he made on a Tuesday evening to the Brew coffee shop in Five Points help with that.
Aided by an energetic young campaign team helmed by campaign manager Jenny Busby (one of the rising stars of Northeast Florida politics), Hazouri projects a genuine enthusiasm and wit that politicians half his age would envy. In a sense, he’s ageless like his former political mentor, U.S. Rep. Charlie Bennett. But Hazouri, unlike the local Congressman-for-life, is attempting to establish himself in yet another new office.
In doing so, he embodies paradoxes. Early in his address, he mentioned campaigning at a senior center earlier in the day; important, he related, because half of senior citizens vote absentee. Left unsaid was the fact that he is gold with the older set, a reminder of when times were good and their hips were intact.
Hazouri, to reach younger voters, can’t be who he is not. He has to sell them on his virtues, including experience, which we “need more than ever” now.
The candidate hit on many of the themes all candidates do in this cycle, such as public safety and economic development. He didn’t shirk away from his belief that Jacksonville needs to pass the HRO, an issue that Bill Bishop used in the mayoral race to run a strong third despite lacking party backing. In an election cycle where Democrats have all but begged the incumbent mayor to take such a stand, such a message should resonate.
Beyond the HRO outreach, Hazouri’s politics are pragmatic to a fault. He wants to see an increased focus on our educational system, as well as on mitigating the effects of property crime (a category not mentioned much in any forums or debates this cycle).
He reminded people (or in some cases, informed them for the first time) that his efforts were instrumental in driving the economic development of the Jaguars era, saying it wouldn’t have happened with the “tolls and the [paper mill] smell” he eliminated during his term.
Appropriately given that Jaguars owner Shad Khan went $100 grand deep into the Alvin Brown “Taking Jacksonville to the Next Level PC” in March, Hazouri is a booster for the kind of economic development Khan seeks to bring (and profit from) via the Shipyards project and downtown development more generally. Born and raised in downtown, Hazouri “knows how viable it used to be.”
Much as is the case with Brown, Hazouri attempts to transcend the partisan back-and-forth in his rhetoric, with lines like “there are no Republican or Democratic pension plans or potholes.” If elected, he pledges to bring “leadership” to council, which needs “someone to be Captain Chaos.” The Jackson High and Jacksonville University alumnus may seem like an unlikely agent of disruption on the council, but if his school board stint was any indication, he would be ready to take a prominent role on Day One.
Hazouri’s fundraising in March was more robust than that of Youngblood, and he will need the money. This will be a close race, and one should expect mailpieces from both sides sooner than later.
It remains to be seen what role third place finisher Mincy Pollock will play in the weeks ahead. Despite being a Democrat, Pollock spent much of the race toward the First Election hammering Hazouri and saving Youngblood the trouble.
There’s an outside chance that Pollock could endorse Youngblood, which would make for an interesting press conference at least. Whether Pollock’s endorsement would matter or not against one of the leading Democrats in Jacksonville history is a different matter.
