A.G. Gancarski
Some things are certain. Death and taxes. The sun coming up in the east and Chic-Fil-A being closed on Sunday. And that you can’t go more than a few days without hearing Jacksonville Sheriff candidates Ken Jefferson and Mike Williams debate.
As opposed to the race at the top of the ticket, which will see a whopping total of two joint appearances between Mayor Alvin Brown and his Republican opponent, Lenny Curry, Jefferson and Williams have debated their ideas and qualifications across the city. Unlike in that aforementioned mayoral race, though, both of the candidates welcome the dialogue.
Saturday’s forum, quipped Jefferson, was “probably about the 40th forum we’ve done.” I’ve covered a good chunk of these. And the process has made both candidates better, liberating them from the yoke of soundbites, and deepening each other’s understanding of the priorities of the other side (a meaningful point beyond party line, as the divisions in this sheriff’s race go beyond party label to deeper identifications and relationships, a remarkably underreported point, though if you’ve followed political media in Jacksonville, maybe it isn’t really so remarkable).
The three most interesting things in the forum all involved plays in my favorite spectator sport: inside baseball. This does a nice job of setting up the three televised debates between these two candidates between now and May 19th’s election.
The first inside baseball play was from Williams, in answering a question about morale, in which he, for the second time during this campaign, made a reference to deposed Fraternal Order of Police President Nelson Cuba and the Allied Veterans scandal that brought him down (without naming Cuba directly). Williams, in pointing out problems with morale in the department, mentioned that one of the top two negotiators for JSO employees was “arrested in scandal.”
Cuba was not exonerated; he was found guilty, and is being severely punished with a unique form of house arrest that allows him, in the words of a local paper, to “travel to Nicaragua for his cigar business.” (That’s a big house he has.)
The second inside baseball play, a brushback pitch from Jefferson, was in response to Williams on the morale question, in which the Democrat brought up disciplinary issues in the department, including the Sheriff’s decision to “ostracize a ranking officer on television.” That ranking officer, Rob Schoonover, was criticized by John Rutherford and suspended for three days for “failure to conform to work standards” in handling the Cherish Perrywinkle murder case in 2015.
Schoonover crossed party lines to endorse Jefferson after the Republican failed to advance from the First Election, joining the Fraternal Order of Police endorsed candidate, Republican Jimmy Holderfield, in helping Jefferson prove that “we can do better… together.”
While the FOP did not endorse in the runoff, Holderfield and Jefferson are good friends, and Holderfield’s experience and institutional knowledge is an indispenable asset in Jefferson’s campaign. This leads to some interesting cross-messaging from Jefferson, who is the official Democratic candidate, but whose campaign has not run exactly parallel to that of that of Mayor Brown.
While Jefferson was at the Alvin Brown GOTV rally for Hispanic voters that I covered yesterday, and did actually use the “One Team, One Fight” tagline once on Saturday, albeit under his breath, the fact is that Jefferson is much closer to Holderfield and Schoonover in this campaign than he is to his party mate. And if you listen closely when Jefferson speaks, you can hear essential differences between the messaging of Jefferson and Brown.
The most vivid example of such in this debate was when Williams and Jefferson discussed the impending Sheriff’s office budget. Last week, Mayor Brown went on the offense against Sheriff Rutherford, telling me at a Wednesday press conference that Sheriff Rutherford had a $400M budget and that it was up to him to reallocate resources to reverse the tide of rising crime.
Jefferson didn’t exactly endorse Rutherford’s counterargument that any budgetary increases in the last few years have been eaten up by spiraling pension obligations and the burden of workers comp. He did issue an unmistakable rebuke of the Democratic Mayor, however, when he said that “when [people] hear $400M, they always think ‘what are they doing’” at the Sheriff’s Office with that money, essentially undercutting the mayor’s posture that money is being squandered at the JSO.
While Jefferson would trim the fat of “unnecessary middle and upper management,” he took great pains not to yoke his success or failure on May 19 to Mayor Brown’s campaign, “one team, one fight” or not.
It’s “important to have a good working relationship with the mayor,” he said, no matter whether Curry or Brown is elected.
People love to say that city elections should be non-partisan. Last I checked, though, no one running for office is forced to choose a party. These are voluntary decisions, “unilateral exercises” as Bill Bishop might say. Jefferson has taken great care to leave daylight between himself and Mayor Brown, leaving the door open for collaboration with Lenny Curry, who, tellingly, was endorsed by the aforementioned Fraternal Order of Police.
The forum, hosted by the VeteransNews Network, will be hosted on their website for viewing for those who have interest.
