A.G. Gancarski
The first negative mailpiece of the Jacksonville mayoral election is out, and it’s a rhetorical masterpiece, distilling many of the themes Lenny Curry and his adherents have advocated in recent months into a hard- hitting two-sided document that lays singular blame at the feet of Alvin Brown for what the mailpiece dubs a “pension disaster.”
The address side of the mailpiece has a grid of headshots, a stockphoto cross-section of 21st century American humanity, with a stark message overlaying the pictorial:
“$1,700,000,000.00 in unpaid pension benefits… with no end in sight. Alvin Brown’s Pension Disaster Hurts All of Us.”
The flipside contains support for this claim.
“Democrat Mayor Alvin Brown’s Political Malpractice Is Hurting Us,” says the top of the card, next to a first-responder troika of a policeman, a fireman, and a nurse, all with intense expressions on their faces. Then, below that, the damning quotes from a cross-section of local media. Quotes from the two highest rated television news operations in the local market, juxtaposed with selections from print outlets ranging from the local alt-weekly to the Jacksonville Business Journal, lambasting the mayor for inaccessibility, pension problems, credit downgrades, and borrow and spend economics.
“Alvin Brown hides from big issues, plays political shell games,” continues the polemic. “Alvin Brown has made a mess of things in City Hall, because on the most important issues Brown is all politics – and no leadership. Brown’s pension plan makes no sense – borrowing money to pay unpaid bills?!”
The “Pension Disaster” costs each adult over $2,500, continues the document, which concludes as follows:
“Who suffers from Alvin Brown’s Political Malpractice? All of us. Democrat Alvin Brown’s Pension Disaster: A $1,700,000,000.00 shell game he’s playing with all of us.”
All of the expected themes are there, ranging from the Rummell “competence” critique to the general complaint among the news media that the mayor is not accessible when it comes to addressing hot-button issues. Local Democrats were quick to counter the mailpiece’s claims, saying it belied the branding that Curry is “not a politician,” and was a vessel containing “shameless, bold-faced lies about who created this pension problem.”
“It is interesting that a Political Action Committee, which is supported by members of the Civic Council, is attacking Mayor Alvin Brown as fiscally irresponsible for borrowing $240 million from JEA when it was the Civic Council that suggested borrowing $1 billion,” maintained James Poindexter, secretary of the Duval Democratic Party, who added that “A bipartisan group of business and political leaders, as well as the pension task force, believe that this is the better option to solve the problem.”
The Curry PAC’s mailpiece was fortuitously timed, coming just two days after the Mayor’s Office suffered a setback with City Council when Council President Clay Yarborough refused to have the Police and Fire Pension Fund’s revisions of the Council’s deal added to Tuesday night’s Council meeting agenda. The City Council approved the deal 16-3, but the revisions have rankled many on Council, who are becoming increasingly impatient with the PFPF’s role in the process. Their position is buttressed by increased scrutiny on the state level, as it appears a Tallahassee investigation of the controversial PFPF and the Duval public pension system is imminent.
The mailpiece was issued by Together for a Greater Jacksonville, not the Curry campaign itself. This segmentation of messaging is, in Poindexter’s reckoning, by design.
“Lenny Curry is not a household name in Jacksonville. He is spending a great deal of money introducing himself to the voters,” Poindexter says. “Curry, the former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, wants people to believe he is ‘not a politician.’ The Political Action Committee provides a vehicle for these patently false statements and a shield for Lenny.”
Meanwhile, the mayor’s own staff members were in rapid response mode to the mailer. Mayor Brown’s Chief of Staff Chris Hand Tweeted:
“City, public safety, and civic leaders have worked together to solve a long-time challenge. That’s reality. Anything else is just noise. Mayor Brown and City Council members have worked hard to solve a major pension challenge not of their making. That’s called leadership.”
