A.G. Gancarski
Jacksonville City Councilwoman Anna Brosche is in her second month on the jobl. However, she has been identified as a rising star by the national GOP.
Proof of that: her trip to Cleveland on Thursday for the first Republican presidential debate at the invitation of the Republican National Committee.
Despite a busy schedule, Brosche took a flight up. As she stated with characteristic understated pragmatism, “I’m not sure how often these opportunities come.”
They may come again for Brosche, the first Asian-American on Jacksonville’s City Council, as the RNC took note of her campaign early in the process.
“They had been watching campaigns down here,” she said, and they reached out after the First Election, when she was the sole Republican left standing in a race against incumbent Councilwoman Kimberly Daniels.
Thursday’s event allowed Brosche to be seen by national party movers and shakers. It also gave her a live, in-the-arena vantage point on a debate that most of America saw via the pixelated cable-TV-only images from the Fox News Channel.
The obvious first question: her impressions of Donald Trump.
She agreed with my take of how it came off on TV: as “all Trump, all the time.”
“A lot of people expected that,” she said.
Brosche, a perpetual optimist, sees Trump’s effect on the debate, and the race, as a salutary one.
“He’s not a rule follower,” the At Large Councilwoman said, and “He raised the bar on what people [had to do] to be memorable.”
In the end, “They all did make a statement” and “let their personalities shine.”
Trump, as some observed, got a different type of questioning. Where many of the candidates got policy questions that bordered on the softball, Trump dealt with questions about his demeanor to women and his corporate bankruptcies.
When asked about that, Brosche echoed his soon-to-be-famous line: “He took advantage of our nation’s laws” she said of his high-profile business filings.
The questions, however, struck her as legitimate.
The questioners, she said, were “just reaching into backgrounds and comments on the record. That’s the record he has.”
Brosche described Trump’s performance in Cleveland as “memorable,” but she’s “not sure that he won anyone last night.”
One thing that didn’t come off on television: the commercial breaks.
The candidates were “collegial” and “talking to one another,” Brosche said, at first in packs, then different people crossed the stage … including Trump.
“At times, I noticed he initiated conversations,” Brosche said. He would walk across the stage, putting his hands on the shoulder of one opponent or another.
The conversation then turned to Favorite Son candidates.
Regarding Sen. Marco Rubio, Brosche thought he did well.
“I’m really proud and impressed that Florida produced two really good candidates,” she said of Rubio and former Gov. Jeb Bush.
“Senator Rubio shined, especially at the end. Not everyone at the end asked for everyone’s vote” as Rubio did.
Regarding Bush, Brosche noticed that he wasn’t quite on top of his game at times.
“I picked up on a little of that from Governor Bush,” Brosche said.
She doesn’t think his uneven performance will do lasting harm to his campaign.
“With him leading,” she said, “it’s up to others to step up.”
Bush had his moments “on the education answer, and on a couple others,” Brosche said. “He did a nice job of getting comfortable.”
And he will do better, she said, once he works off the rust of his eight years out of the political mainstream.
“It’s so early,” she said. “We’re going to see improvement from a number of them.”
Brosche was flying into Cleveland, and missed the Happy Hour debate where Carly Fiorina made her case to be considered part of the top tier.
“I heard she did a really good job,” Brosche said. “It will be interesting to see who she’ll be displacing” in the top 10 going forward.
Brosche, who won a four-way race as a political unknown against a minister with a national network of support, knows very well that “anybody has a shot of being part of this” in the end.
In the end, regarding last night’s debate, “I think everybody came out and showed who they were.”
