A.G. Gancarski
On Wednesday, former Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown picked his home turf for his first official campaign stop in his congressional campaign.
Brown, running against Tallahassee Democrat Al Lawson in the August primary in the east/west North Florida district, picked AGAPE Health to message on health care. The location was not incidental: AGAPE CEO, former state Rep. Mia Jones, was Brown’s former “health commissioner” in City Hall.
Brown was accompanied by Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Missouri Congressman and former Congressional Black Caucus chair who endorsed him against Lawson, a first-term incumbent, as he discussed exclusively with this outlet the federal role in health care.
“I think the Affordable Care Act is very important for our country and clearly for Florida,” Brown said. “Particularly Jacksonville. I had the opportunity to work with the [Barack] Obama administration on the Affordable Care Act. I think it’s needed.”
“Health care is a human right,” Brown continued. “And I think everyone should have access to decent, affordable health care.”
Of course, Brown’s tenure as Mayor (2011-2015) overlapped with Gov. Rick Scott not expanding Medicaid.
“What we did was we literally focused on enrolling people into the Affordable Care Act,” Brown said. “We hosted Secretary Kathleen Sebelius here and brought all the stakeholders together and made it happen.”
“We opened up our community centers, worked with all the health care providers and non-profits to market it, to educate the community,” Brown said. “We were number one — I think number one in the country for the city, and we led in a lot of areas.”
“The partnership worked,” Brown said. “We had a good team of people … in spite of the state not receiving that funding, we were very pro-active.”
The conversation pivoted to the campaign, including whether Brown would have the resources to compete with Lawson.
“I think we’re going to do everything we can to make sure we have the resources to compete and win,” Brown said. “We’re reaching out to everyone who believes in the vision … we’ll have a lot of support.”
We asked Brown about Lawson’s Republican support in 2016, including from donor Peter Rummell (a Brown supporter in 2011 who supported Brown’s 2015 opponent, Lenny Curry, for Mayor) and from Susie Wiles, who helped Lawson make inroads to Jacksonville while she worked on the Donald Trump campaign.
Could Brown shear off some of that support that proved helpful two years prior?
“I can’t speak for the incumbent, but I can say what we’re doing, we’re reaching out to everybody, and I’m very thankful for the people who will support my candidacy and we’re just going to work hard and make it happen.”
