A.G. Gancarski
If you’re reading this, you likely have a positive relationship with the Thanksgiving holiday. This should be especially true for the doughty stalwarts of the #JaxPol universe, where seemingly everyone, from the congressional level down to City Council, have tangible things for which they should be grateful.
U.S. Rep. Ander Crenshaw, for one, can be grateful that his safe seat only gets safer, as he continues his bid to be the new-school iteration of Charlie Bennett, who served that district as a Blue Dog Democrat for a half century. Crenshaw, well into his third decade in Congress, is there for as long as he wants to be.
Congresswoman Corrine Brown, meanwhile, can be thankful for the tone-deafness of her many political adversaries, from the GOP to the League of Women Voters, who see her seat as the epitome of gerrymandering. Brown goes toe-to-toe with literally anyone who crosses her path, and generally wins; for the most recent proof of that, ask Duval County School Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, who is still smarting from her bum rushing the show at a workshop where board members were working through a cornucopia of boundary changes.
Down from that level, just a bit, the state representatives and senators. Audrey Gibson, Aaron Bean, Mia Jones, Jay Fant, Paul Renner, Charles McBurney … all of whom can be thankful that they never had to face a competitive election once they were ensconced in their seats. Though no one is elected to an eight year term, they might as well be, as the only way to dislodge a NE Florida emissary to Tallahassee is to term him or her out.
Janet Adkins, meanwhile, made comments that in a different context may have adversely impacted her career; in Nassau County, they didn’t dislodge her from the inside track to school superintendent.
At the municipal level, Mayor Lenny Curry has as much as anyone in town (except for Shad Khan!) for which to be thankful.
A charming and gracious wife, an amazing family, political operatives who are among the sharpest working in the area — all of them are in his corner.
Along with some great political luck: succeeding Alvin Brown, a mayor who the polls assured us had epic, impregnable popularity … up until they mysteriously didn’t. Brown left office with enough bad press and ill will for five months of the Blame Game, everything from the prepaid debit card cluster to the Eureka Gardens financing deal.
Curry brought in some of the sharpest operators in post-consolidation Jacksonville history. Sam Mousa, Kerri Stewart, Mike Weinstein, along with some young guns from the campaign (Jessica Laird, Jordan Elsbury, and Will Torres). The end result, at least thus far, has been a professional operation, the moves of which almost invariably make sense to the media covering them.
The mayor probably doesn’t mind the NFL triple-header either.
City Council, likewise, has a lot for which to be thankful.
Council President Greg Anderson and VP Lori Boyer are smart legislators, who understand both what the market will bear and what the city needs. They are helped along, as are many of the stronger Council members, by indisputably competent and equally smart Executive Council Assistants in Leeann Krieg and Nicole Spradley.
Tommy Hazouri, arguably the leading Democrat on Council, likewise has a top-flight ECA in Jenny Busby. No one a quarter century ago would have predicted Hazouri being a Councilman at this point. Yet he brings a blend of idealism and realpolitik that enriches Council, even if there are occasional clashes with the executive branch on one issue or another.
John Crescimbeni and Bill Gulliford can be thankful for many things; among them, their unique ability to get into the weeds on policy issues yet break it down in a way a reasonably engaged citizen (or even a journalist!) can understand. These men are probably the sharpest political operators on the current Council, and a guessing game among local media is “what will Crescimbeni do in 2019?” Word is that he may have almost enough commitments to seal the Council vice presidency for a year down the road, which sets up an interesting interplay in two years between him as President and the mayor.
And reporters? They can be thankful for getting to cover that.
