A.G. Gancarski
On Wednesday afternoon, the First Coast Manufacturers Association endorsed Lenny Curry at Raintree Graphics, an FCMA business on the Southside.
Most endorsement events generally involve a podium, a few prepared remarks, and a photo op.
This one was a little bit different.
Most endorsements are decided in boardrooms, and media has no access to the process. Before the actual endorsement announcement (not the decision, which was made before Wednesday), Florida Politics was in the boardroom with Curry and about a dozen members of the FCMA board while they had a candid and interesting discussion.
Of the campaign’s trajectory, Curry said “momentum was good,” a function of consistent messaging during the course of the campaign. He contrasted that with his opponent, who “has tried to re-message over the last two weeks.” Curry likened that to a football team abandoning its game plan for a sequence of trick plays, “a flea flicker, a Hail Mary, and a reverse” in order.
Despite what he clearly sees as inchoate messaging from his opponent, Curry is “not taking anything for granted,” even as he dismissed the mayor’s “political shenanigans” — including the suggested minimum wage hike on the state level — as meaning the Alvin Brown operation is in deep trouble.
“If he’s serious, he ought to stop talking about it and put a bill in front of city council.”
Curry’s bet, clearly, is that the mayor is not about to do that. That said, he knows the race is not won. It will come down to “fundamentals” and a robust “turnout operation.”
“We had a serious one in the first round,” Curry said, but acknowledged they will have to do it again.
Curry told those assembled he was “pleased with the results” of the First Election, especially given where he started from: with limited name recognition and an opponent with approval ratings in the 70 percent range.
Despite confidants lamenting the “dysfunction” in city hall, he said he was told the “mayor can’t be beat” and that running was not “wise or reasonable.”
“The pundits didn’t predict” his performance, he said. “Maybe we over-performed based on what was said a year ago.”
Curry was asked about outreach to the Bill Bishop voters, and his “data tells me we’re doing a good job” and that there might have been a “different outcome Election Night if Bill had not been in the race.”
Curry asserted that Bishop “ran a good campaign” and that he has reached out to the councilman to “draw on his wisdom and experience.”
One thing that mattered to the people in that room, who are not unlike many Jacksonville voters: the lack of debates between the two candidates. Curry again had an opportunity to remind voters that he would step up to the mic when Brown would not.
The case for an endorsement from a business group ultimately is rooted in communication. Will the candidate listen? Is the candidate willing to talk about relevant matters? For the FCMA, it was clear they didn’t have the comfort level and dialogue with the mayor that they needed to support his re-election.
One group’s endorsement is not a huge deal, perhaps. But when a group has almost 300 member companies, and is one of many groups that supports a challenger to an incumbent that the pundits thought was unbeatable, it is significant. Brown has less than three weeks to reverse the narrative trajectory. Can he do it? Right now, that’s the question upon which his political future hinges.
