Melissa Ross
New Jacksonville Planning Commission Chairwoman-elect Lisa King took to the radio airwaves Friday to make her case as her seeming showdown with Jacksonville Mayor Lenny Curry enters a new phase.
King, as Florida Politics A.G. Gancarski has been reporting, refused to resign from the commission at Curry’s request. (She was joined by Commissioner Joey McKinnon, also asked to step down). King ran unsuccessfully this year for the Jacksonville City Council as a Democrat.
In what constitutes much more drama than usually occurs at a quasi-judicial proceeding, commission members Thursday night bucked the wishes of the Curry administration members in the audience, and elected King as chairwoman-elect.
The Jacksonville City Council will now decide whether King gets to stay.
“I may have the votes,” King told listeners of WJCT’s First Coast Connect.
“I’ve gotten a lot of encouragement from Council members from both parties. I believe that I can. But even if I’m not successful, I believe it’s important to stand for what’s right for the city first, and not any potential embarrassment I might experience.”
King has in her corner two heavyweight Democrats on the Council, Tommy Hazouri and John Crescimbeni. But can she garner enough Republican support to swing 10 votes on the 19-member body?
King was coy about her efforts to whip votes away from Curry.
“I am in a difficult fight, I don’t have the resources of the mayor’s office, so I am not going to tip my hand and make their job easier,” she said.
“I’m humbled by the support of my peers. The reason I decided not to resign is, not only is moving people out in the middle of their terms unprecedented, we’d have a majority of new members at the same time. Not all boards and commissions are equal. We are a quasi-judicial, highly technical body. There’s a steep learning curve. The mayor is actually going to slow down development with five new people learning the process. The Planning Commission wasn’t designed to absorb this many people at once. I felt like I had no choice.”
King allowed she does have future political aspirations, saying she may decide to run for an At-Large City Council seat in eight years. She brushed off questions as to whether taking on the new mayor could hurt those ambitions.
“This isn’t a partisan battle, this is about what’s right for the city.”
