A.G. Gancarski
The most telling moment during Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown‘s “employee appreciation event,” which served as a de facto farewell address was during the print gaggle afterward, when David Bauerlein asked the outgoing mayor about how he was coping with the loss.
“I was surprised,” Brown said about the night of the election. “I thought I had it.” It was up to his campaign manager, Isaiah Nelson, to tell Brown that it wasn’t his night.
Brown went ahead and wrote, on the spot, a concession speech … apparently not using the one that Yianni Varonis wrote for him (Varonis had told me that he had written a victory speech, a concession speech, and an oh-s**t-there’s-a-recount speech; that last phrase is not a direct quote).
Then he walked it off. “I accepted it,” he said, and “prayed about it.” Then he took Wednesday off. Came back to work Thursday; hasn’t missed a beat since.
Now, I like Alvin Brown. I know he has great things ahead of him, and yet another political act sooner than one might think, one in which he undoubtedly will learn from the message miasma that undid his re-election bid.
Not-so-fun fact: Brown’s campaign messaging lost him that election. Too many cooks in the kitchen, and all they came out with was Stouffer’s.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of his speech seemed lifted from those heady days before the March election, when people in both parties were openly fretting/feting the possibility of him winning outright.
He did not use 36,000 new jobs. However, he did use Brooklyn, and the Fresh Market, and the Corner Bakery (which may be the blandest restaurant, excluding Jimmy Johns and the 7-Eleven, in Riverside). He reminded folks that four years ago, some straw men (and Mike Hogan) wondered whether investing in Downtown was “worth the effort.” He talked about Hemming Park “thriving.” He did not, it should be said, use Downtown is Booming or Downtown is on Fire. He gave props to Peter Rummell, ironically, which made one senior staff member flash a Cheshire Cat smile.
They also had a variant of the 100 Accomplishments list used before the First Election. Six posters full of accomplishments, in list form. No real singular one to point to. And maybe that underscored a problem with the Brown messaging in the last year. Way too much “throw it all at the wall and see what sticks.”
To be sure, Mayor Brown said some things that weren’t boilerplate. I was genuinely happy that Chris Hand got his props for being the “quarterback” of the pension deal. Hand was always willing to edify reporters on the Pension Deal and other complex issues, and Brown recognizing him, along with dozens of members of his team, was meaningful and affecting.
Likewise, Mayor Brown talking about youthful criminals as “young people” who “when they make a mistake, we don’t lock them up,” was powerful. And, during the aforementioned media gaggle, him talking about taking his sons to Disney World (or maybe on a drive across the country, as he plans to get some travel in) was compelling. It mattered so much to him because he felt they didn’t get the spring break they deserved, as he was on the campaign, and because he grew up without a dad and it mattered to him that he spend every moment he can with his sons.
So many of my criticisms of Alvin Brown came down to what seemed like political calculation over authenticity in messaging. When (not if) he makes his political comeback, it will be interesting to see how much ownership he has over his messaging. The more his words sound like his own, the farther he will go.
In crafting a more compelling and personal message during his inevitable political rebirth, he might be able to avoid odd performances, like his appearance on First Coast Connect with our colleague, Melissa Ross, in which he seemed defensive in fielding questions ranging from his signing of the squelched Charlotte’s Web moratorium and the Florida Democratic Party controlling his campaign to why Rick Scott, Peter Rummell, and John Rutherford did what they could to do him in.
On some level, the mayor doesn’t get it. He thinks that people care whether or not he ran a “positive campaign.” Being too negative wasn’t why he lost. Lenny Curry ethered Brown, over and over again. Brian Hughes played the dozens more than anyone else in Jacksonville politics this century. And the one time Brown fired back, in that second debate? Curry borrowed Bill Clinton‘s line, saying that the mayor was indulging in the politics of personal destruction.
Cold. Blooded.
Brown lost not because he wasn’t positive enough (here, it should be said that his team’s Party Boss Lenny Curry attacks were laughably ineffective and unconvincing). Rather, he lost because he used a bowdlerized one-size-fits-all messaging crafted by out-of-town experts who don’t know the difference between the Ramona Flea Market and Pecan Park, between Famous Amos and Maple Street, or between Jacksonville Beach and Avondale.
Nice guys, all of them. But they missed something. They reduced Jacksonville to its Wikipedia entry, when actually this city is ineffably complex, a conglomeration of subcultures and microcultures. Jacksonville is an epic poem, a sprawling opus. One that they handled with all the delicacy of a PowerPoint.
