A.G. Gancarski
In football, offensive coordinators often like to script their first 15 plays. That allows them to see what the defense will allow them to do, and what the defense won’t.
Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry, who coaches his son’s youth football team, is acutely aware of that principle, as he shows the Bold New City of the South what’s in the One City One Jacksonville playbook.
Some good plays are in there. There are the running plays he’s used to go up the middle. He’s even been able to run behind his left tackle, Bishop John Guns, and find daylight.
Curry hasn’t had to run to the right too much in the first two months. The defense is stacked over there. Even the rubes in the stands wait for it.
Despite having appointed some folks appointed by the previous mayor, Curry is still feeling the brunt of criticism from Democrats and even many moderate Republicans for his administration’s decision to sever ties with Nancy Soderberg, Ernest Isaac, and Melody Bishop.
There are those, both Democrats and Republicans who supported the mayor, who say his policy of board appointments run in that direction.
We’re seen the Ron Littlepage charge that removing those people amounts to “scorched-earth politics.” Of course, the Curry side disagrees with that read.
However, it’s a meme that picked up steam among many of the local moderates (including many outside the apparatus of the Democratic Party) who can, if ticked off, take what should be a cakewalk of a re-election bid and turn it into a contentious contest.
In emails and messages and conversations, they’ve contacted Florida Politics to say that getting rid of Ernest Isaac from the Jacksonville Aviation Authority was bad business because, for one thing, the guy is really close to former mayor and current Councilman Tommy Hazouri. Almost like brothers, some say.
And for another thing, because if stroked a little, it is theorized Isaac very easily could have been swayed into supporting Curry.
Those for whom this matters, naturally, say this isn’t happening now.
Hazouri was not thrilled by Isaac being bounced. Nor was he thrilled by Soderberg’s farewell.
Rejecting the idea that Soderberg might very well throw some salt in Curry’s game by way of helping Hillary Clinton, Hazouri insisted that she was an asset to JAXPORT, Lake Ray‘s counternarrative notwithstanding.
Of course, Ray’s theory was that the mayor lacked a comfort level with Soderberg that he might have had with people Curry got to know during the campaign.
And then there’s the case of Bishop, whose husband challenged the man who appointed her to the Downtown Investment Authority board for mayor.
Bouncing her seemed to some, including key Curry supporters, to be excessive, especially given her role in Riverwalk architecture.
Are these dealbreaking moves? No. Most of what Curry has done meets with general approval, especially the meaningful outreach to the African-American community.
However, and maybe this reflects a double standard, Curry is still attempting to evolve his persona into a transformational mayor from that of the party boss caricature that was promulgated by political opponents a few months back.
It was on the TV. On the mailers. On the door knockers.
And it doesn’t accord with who Curry is, as a person.
But that doesn’t matter to the critics, who see a lit match and rush for the kerosene.
The critics look for the perpetual campaign. Having no meaningful power in Jacksonville at this point, the campaign posture emboldens them. The local Democratic Party has some critical divisions and very few express enthusiasm for its record of late. Yet moves that seem political return them from irrelevance to the posture of loyal opposition.
Littlepage contended in his column that veteran City Hall watchers say that bumping people off boards midterm “simply isn’t done.” Whether that’s strictly true or not is debatable. What can’t be disputed, however, is that people notice the difference between how previous Republican mayors handled terms on boards and how the current administration does.
Whether that’s a function of being in a different, more partisan time than bygone eras is an open question. Rumor swirls that former Republican public officials believe that it should have been handled a different way, however.
There are longstanding benefits to seeming above the party fray. Did Curry get juice from the endorsements of moderates (especially in the Tea Party era) Peyton and Delaney? In a couple of ways. It brought the more moderate Republicans home, ameliorating uncertainties. And some say the endorsements helped Curry in the African American community.
It was telling that after Delaney endorsed Curry, Alvin Brown made his grand pivots to the left, on issues such as minimum wage, Medicaid expansion, and pushing the non-discrimination study.
Campaign staff members took credit for those developments, touting the limited-time-only social populist menu as their creation. Yet the Curry people knew that when Brown shifted from the center, he was done.
Of course, the center doesn’t exist on every issue. Consider the Human Rights Ordinance expansion. Conventional wisdom says that an HRO has twelve Yes votes on Council already. That said, the mayor is expected to lead on the issue. People will want an unambiguous stance. Many of those will be “supporters,” but there is a world of cultural remove between the Baptists on the Westside and the young Republicans renting and owning in Downtown and Springfield.
Word is that the senior staff in the mayor’s suite wants the issue done quickly and done right. Will the mayor act as decisively on the issue of extending human rights to a perpetually persecuted class as he did in showing Bishop and Soderberg the door?
That is the question Curry faces. And it may be the difference between being simply an operationally successful mayor and being the kind of visionary he campaigned as being, and comes off as during his most genuine moments, like his stirring remarks to the young men from the One City One Jacksonville Leadership Academy.
To succeed in this effort, Curry and his adherents will have to find a way to separate the vehement opponents of the eventual bill from those who are ultimately agnostic. Look at the counternarrative in other cities, anticipate it, and then summarily and without sentimentality cut it off at the knees, with soft power at first, and then, if necessary, a more robust approach.
There will be the need to put good will in his pocket.
Almost as old as the consolidated city of Jacksonville itself was Richard Nixon‘s Southern Strategy, which was predicated on a simple maxim: Run to the right, govern from the center.
The center-right model that historically prevails in Jacksonville necessarily is socially moderate, with occasional keens to the left on environmental issues, and a tacit nod to party politics.
People bring up the board removals as unprecedented, and in saying so, what really comes off is not necessarily that they are intrinsically wrong, but that they represent a deviation from a model that has proven to work well enough.
Curry has challenged the conventional wisdom many times over; his approach to boards is another example of that. Former Mayors John Delaney and John Peyton never took such liberties.
But, then again, their era was one of continuity, not a return to the golden mean.
Challenging the conventional wisdom, in a city like Jacksonville, is a risk in and of itself.
Curry ultimately has the right to do what he wants with those boards. Yet there are those who say, just out of earshot, that he is out of bounds in doing so.
