A.G. Gancarski
Before Wednesday night’s debate between Alvin Brown and Lenny Curry, I bumped into the Republican candidate outside the debate hall on the Florida State College at Jacksonville South campus. He was enthusiastic about having the opportunity to debate Mayor Brown, saying that it was the “right thing for the mayor to do.”
A somewhat surprising statement, given the rhetoric the Brown campaign used to announce that they would in fact participate in the debate. Brown contrasted his position as “the voice of support and optimism for Jacksonville” with Curry’s alleged tendency for doing “nothing but criticize” the city.
I was expecting fire and brimstone. It didn’t quite turn out that way.
The mayor’s opening statement incorporated much of the rhetoric of the press release, saying that Curry has been “lying about what Jacksonville is” and “denying that Jacksonville is headed in the right direction” as a “great city.” Beyond those assertions that Curry had been lying, the mayor made his case for another term, saying that he “always had an eight year plan.”
In response, Curry noted that the only ads the mayor currently is running are “negative,” a direct contrast to Curry’s “visionary” messaging.
He then issued a cutting rejoinder.
“You’re a nice guy. I like you. You’re well-intentioned. But you failed to lead,” Curry said.
Much of the early part of the debate dealt with crime, which served two purposes: it gave Curry an opportunity to his his public safety themes, messaging he has honed through the last few weeks; and it gave Brown an opportunity to elucidate his vision, talking of the “Jacksonville Journey like programs” that he has advocated, such as Learn2Earn and Mayor’s Mentors.
Brown spent a lot of the debate messaging against Sheriff John Rutherford, and it started early, as the mayor said that Rutherford had the resources to “hire more officers” and that he “hasn’t done his job.” As the former Chair of the Families of Slain Children, Brown mentioned that “his heart goes out to families” affected by gang and street violence, and he has helped to abate the tide of blood in the streets with “Jacksonville Journey like programs focusing on prevention.”
Curry, meanwhile, drew a link between the 147 police officers cut during the Brown administration, along with Jacksonville Journey programs that had been cut, to a spike in violent crime and murder. He talked about his visit to Grand Park last weekend, where he spoke to people who had seen a shooting a day before, including a ten year old kid. He vowed that under his watch, more officers would be hired and there would be greater investment in children.
Brown countered that he has proposed 80 new officers, and that the Sheriff didn’t go for it. Curry retorted that “you cut the Sheriff’s budget. Clearly, you don’t understand the budget process.”
It went on like that for some time, with Curry lambasting Brown for not providing sufficient resources to Sheriff Rutherford and Brown responding that enforcement is the sheriff’s part of the PIE model. The open question is whether or not voters will accept the mayor’s contention that Sheriff Rutherford has not managed his department efficiently in terms of resource allocation, which seemed to be at the heart of the two candidates’ deep seated disagreement on this issue. Along those lines, it is uncertain if voters will agree that reaching out to the federal Justice Department demonstrated executive leadership on the crime issue or not.
Beyond the crime issue, budgets were a big talker also. Curry reiterated claims he has made throughout the campaign, about a mismanaged “billion dollar budget,” replete with sloppy accounting. Brown, meanwhile, pointed out that the half a billion dollars of accounting errors that Curry kept referring to started in 1999, under the administration of John Delaney, a neat attempt to invalidate a key endorsement from a couple of weeks back.
The two men also had a familiar debate on Jacksonville’s viability as a business climate. The mayor reminded viewers of the 36,000 new jobs created under his watch, that “downtown is thriving” and “booming,” and of his Office of Economic Development, saying that “Downtown is a destination because of my leadership.”
Curry, meanwhile, spotlighted problems with zoning and permitting that cause Jacksonville to lag behind the rest of the state in garnering investment capital from investors outside the city.
One of the recurring themes of this debate, and of this campaign, is why, given Brown’s list of accomplishments, he has been abandoned, in terms of endorsements, by Governor Rick Scott and the Jacksonville Chamber. There is not an easy answer to that question, and it really operates on a subtext level throughout the discourse, but rears its head overtly on some issues, such as the candidates’ discussion of investment in neighborhoods.
The Mayor mentioned his Renew Jax initiative, which brings “jobs and infrastructure” to make “every neighborhood safe and vibrant” by “investing in the Northside, Kings Road, Avenue B, and Soutel.”
There are those in those areas who question the efficacy of these programs. Curry channeled those critiques when he said “I’m telling you what I’m going to do because it isn’t being done” and that the Chamber “knows I’m the guy” to get things done.
The HRO question did come up. Curry reiterated his position that he remains “unconvinced” that it is necessary because “I just don’t believe that [Jacksonville residents] are a discriminatory people.” Brown, meanwhile, mentioned his directive to the General Counsel, saying that it’s “naive to think that discrimination doesn’t exist” and that we needed to be a “21st century city,” but that he would “wait until the study is complete” to give concrete guidance. (Afterwards, in the “green room,” Mayor Brown amplified his position, saying that “obviously discrimination exists.” That said, Brown has yet to overtly address the realities of discrimination against LGBT voters, and those who might have expected a further “pivot” on the position did not get it on this night.
As well, the pension issue surfaced, and the two candidates sparred. Brown declared that “pension reform would take place in 2015,” while Curry lambasted the mayor for not solving the issue with the Peyton plan four years ago, which Mayor Brown said was “dismissed” by City Council. From there the mayor said that the Peyton plan didn’t address the “unfunded liability” piece; Curry countered with an assertion that Jacksonville “lost four years” on the pension issue under the Mayor’s watch.
Mayor Brown had the first closing statement, and it was heavy on the emotional appeal, with a reference to the “American Dream”, to his upbringing where he was raised by a single parent, and with a lot of references to God and the power of prayer. Curry, for his part, laid in criticisms of the city’s current budget problems, issues with violence, crime, and murder, and reiterated his claims regarding economic development.
After the debate, I had some time with the Mayor first, then a conversation with Curry over the phone.
I asked Mayor Brown to address the specific “lies” that Curry had told, which led to the aforementioned press release. Brown said that his opponent simply was “not telling the truth about how successful Jacksonville has been.”
I also asked Mayor Brown to address the fractious relationship he had with the current sheriff, and how he would improve that if he is reelected. He vowed that “from day 1,” he “would sit down with the new sheriff” and develop a real plan, “meet with him every other week,” “work together” with him, and introduce him to “stakeholders.”
A recurrent complaint of Sheriff Rutherford is that the lines of communication with City Hall are not open. Brown disputed that, saying that he “met with Sheriff Rutherford many times over the last four years, in spite of the Sheriff campaigning for his opponent.”
I also asked him about blighted areas, such as Grand Park; Mayor Brown referred to his Renew Jax plan again, and endorsed the I.C.A.R.E. plan for localized economic development, modeled after a successful program in Cleveland, Ohio.
When asked about the debate, Curry was blunt.
“All the mayor did was spin” the “new message” he’d created in recent weeks, which Curry likened to calling a “reverse and Hail Mary” back to back in a football game. Curry asserted that the mayor spent more time attacking him personally than was warranted, which was consistent with the negative advertising and messaging he believes have come from the incumbent’s campaign.
Saying that the business community had “no confidence” in the mayor, Curry asserted that “Jacksonville has failed over the last four years,” and that Mayor Brown demonstrated “no accountability, no responsibility” in attacking the Sheriff especially.
“He’s never in the game,” Curry said, adding that Mayor Brown is best at “photo opportunities and press conferences.”
At this point in the campaign, with Curry ahead in the polls, we are seeing the culmination of a strategy unleashed over the last year. Slowly, meticulously, Curry rose from having no name recognition outside of insider circles to being ahead in polls through making the case that Mayor Brown’s administration has been less than successful.
Can Mayor Brown counter that impression in the next two debates and in the less than two weeks before Election Day? Brown has run on his record throughout this campaign, and Curry’s strategy clearly has been to cast doubt on every aspect of that record, from public safety to pension negotiations, from downtown development to neighborhood renewal.
Has he made a conclusive case? That question will be answered by voters soon enough. But the strategy is to create and capitalize on reasonable doubt, while advancing a compelling alternate vision. For Mayor Brown to counter that, he’s probably going to have to find a fresh way to sell his message. Is there time in this campaign? That’s the question that will animate the few remaining days of what one operative called the most important race in the country right now.
