A.G. Gancarski
Duval County Property Appraiser Jerry Holland turned heads in April with $100,000 raised. In May, he added another $10,550 to the mix.
He has over $110,000 on hand, and has yet to spend money.
Holland, a popular Republican in his first term on the job, faces nominal opposition in Democrat Kurt Kraft, who is largely self-financed and has just over $260 on hand.
To counter Holland, who has been winning Jacksonville elections for decades, Kraft spent over $1,900 in May, with the bulk of that spend being on signage.
Inadvertently, at least until Monday, Holland, a former Supervisor of Elections, had a free ad courtesy of the city of Jacksonville website.
The City of Jacksonville website contained, for two months, boldfaced directions for anyone wishing to donate: “April 2- Duval County Property Appraiser Jerry Holland announce his run for re-election! Should you want to contribute to the campaign send your contribution to Jerry Holland Campaign 1688 Harrington Park Drive Jacksonville 32225.”
Section 350 of Jacksonville municipal code issues prohibitions on blurring campaign and official personae and work, and the city website advertising the campaign would seem to contravene prohibitions on political signs and campaigning on public property.
When we reached out to Holland, he cleared up the matter as a case of human error.
An employee had shown him a draft version of the text and asked if it could be publicized.
He said “absolutely not.”
From there, the employee deleted the text — but not from all browsers.
The message was deleted finally Monday afternoon.
“It sure didn’t help with campaign contributions,” Holland quipped.
3 comments
Ted Roberts
June 4, 2018 at 4:59 pm
DISGRACE. Of course, the Times-Union has been backing Holland for years so don’t expect to see a similar article such as this on that website.
Business as usual in Jacksonville power circles.
Sandra Anderson
June 4, 2018 at 5:27 pm
This matter needs clarification, the news release about Mr. Holland running for re-election was never actually published on the city’s website. As Mr. Holland’s Community Relations Manager, I am personally responsible for news content that is published. This was proposed news item, that when reviewed by Mr. Holland was never approved and to be stricken from news content published to the property appraiser’s website. The item was deleted in city content management systems, not published and not seen again neither by Mr. Holland nor his staff until it was brought to our attention today. From what we have been able to ascertain, certain browsers will cache content that even if yet unpublished/unapproved can then be reflected as live content. That is the case here. Mr. Holland was by no means aware that this content was reflected on the Property Appraiser’s Website, nor did he approve its publication. This was at best human error coupled with some technological glitches that were immediately rectified as soon as it was brought to our office’s attention.
Sandra Anderson
Community Relations Manager, Duval County Property Appraiser’s Office.
Frankie M.
June 4, 2018 at 9:10 pm
Somewhere I heard Reggie Brown yelling “ditto”
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