A.G. GancarskiArriving in Duval County mailboxes Monday, just hours ahead of today’s sold-out and star-studded Lenny Curry Women’s Coalition Fundraiser Luncheon, a new mailing from Together for a Greater Jacksonville takes issue with “Democrat Alvin Brown — another politician we can’t trust.”
“Politician Alvin Brown says all the right things, but should we take his word?” asks the piece, which continues the Curry camp arguments, honed during the past few months, that “we have higher taxes” (specifically, higher property taxes) and “more government waste” (a reference to what WJXT TV-4 called “the mayor’s plan to borrow up to $240 million” as part of the currently considered police and fire pension deal.
The flip side of the mailer is equally blunt. “Democrat Alvin Brown says one thing … but does another,” the piece contends, regarding a recent Brown ad’s contentions that the mayor “cut waste” and “didn’t raise taxes.” The Curry mailer points out that “property taxes rose 14%” and that the mayor “proposed massive debt, claiming that it would balance the budget.”
When asked about the mailer, Curry Campaign and Committee spokesman Brian Hughes said, “Under Mayor Brown, property taxes went up on Jacksonville’s families and he produced a budget that would have given $11.8 million to one of his big political donors,” Hughes said, alluding to Brown’s support for Toney Sleiman and the Jacksonville Landing renovation proposal.
“Now he has the audacity to make that crony a star in his TV ads,” Hughes said. “Pay-to-play politics, cronyism, and lies are hallmarks of this mayor’s administration. Jacksonville deserves better than Brown’s failures.”
Speaking for the Brown Campaign, Deputy Campaign Manager Fabien Levy had this to say.
“Party boss Lenny Curry is continuing the same sort of negative attacks he pushed as the top partisan, political attack dog for the State Party. He’s now lying to Jacksonville voters by covering up his support for the politicians that fought Mayor Brown and raised taxes on their own. Mayor Brown has never supported a tax increase and has cut wasteful spending throughout his four years in office. He’s stopped others from spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars on unnecessary furniture upgrades for the city, reduced the size of city government by eliminating numerous middle-management positions, and he’s the only one in this race that has looked for bipartisan solutions to solve the city’s fiscal issues so we can take Jacksonville to the next level.”
