Wes White, Angela Corey spar at NW Jax forum

Mike Williams seated as Angela Corey stands, speaking.

At the NO-FLAC forum in Northwest Jacksonville on Tuesday night, State Attorney Angela Corey and her 2016 opponent, Wes White, had a memorable interaction

The panelists faced a moderator’s question regarding what their oaths were about, which elicited an interesting response from White, which essentially baited Corey into a heated reply.

White asserted that for a lawyer, the pursuit of justice was the highest calling. He referred to the state attorney’s office as a ministry of justice, which could  try and convict the guilty, or exonerate the innocent.

Alluding to Marissa Alexander, he mentioned a person either taking a plea deal for 3 years, or a guilty plea for 60 years, before saying that as a State Attorney, as a minister of justice, a person must “live and breathe the law and constitution.”

The implication was clear.

White discussed “doing your job,” and “not taking care of yourself,” a reference to Corey enhancing her pension even as “rape test kits” went “unprocessed,” and “as a result, justice has been denied,” allowing serial rapists to rape “again and again.”

“Don’t take money out of the budget and apply it to your own pension,” White said as Corey sat with a fixed smile.

“When you look at someone in office, look at what they do,” White continued.

Around then, the State Attorney had had enough.

She went in on White, without mentioning him by name, discussing “soundbites that aren’t true” and saying that “people who are lawyers tell the truth.”

“Be careful what you’re being told unless you have all the facts,” Corey said.

Angela Corey has resisted the urge to make this a personal campaign. However, it’s clearly personal for White, who has confidence in his position in spite of Corey’s exponential fund raising advantage.

White believes that he can parlay Corey’s unfavorability rating into momentum, and it’s clear that a big part of his strategy is attempting to use earned media, an approach that we saw most recently in Duval County during the Sheriff’s race between Ken Jefferson and Mike Williams.

Jefferson, recall, almost overcame a serious money gap with a variety of events, ranging from sleepovers in crime-ridden neighborhoods to splashy endorsement events. Ultimately, though, he fell to a disciplined Duval GOP machine.

With months to go before the primary, White’s strategy looks to be to engage Corey, to goad the frontrunner to debate.

We have, remarkably, seen this work in Jacksonville on a different scale, as Lenny Curry‘s campaign trolled Alvin Brown into a series of debates that proved catastrophic for the incumbent.

The real question is whether or not Corey will participate in a forum with White again. It’s hard to see what she gains from it.