Phil Ammann
Duval County is now a few days into early in-person voting, with the first of two Souls to the Polls weekends about to commence.
Do Democrats feel lucky? It depends on who you ask.
The Blue Wave that offered so much potential early on may or may not be a tsunami at this point. The Republican noise machine (a device with many components) has been on offense against “socialist” Andrew Gillum.
And while we may not be seeing as many Ron DeSantis signs as we are for the Democrat, polls and other indicators suggest that we are headed for some variation of “too close to call” results in polls.
The questions, every election: when does Duval become Blu-Val. They won’t go away this year, no matter how Gillum does, in part because of the paradigmatic differences between the two top-of-the-ticket candidates.
Both campaigns brought surrogates this week. Gillum had VP Joe Biden. During that rally, DeSantis announced VP Mike Pence would be in Jacksonville Thursday afternoon.
In this campaign, we see the future. But in classic Florida fashion, the past is casting a long shadow.
Biden time
As early in-person voting kicked off Monday for the first time at Jacksonville’s University of North Florida, Democratic chances were jolted by a tested commodity at the podium: former Vice President Biden.
Biden, leading many polls of 2020 hopefuls for the party’s nomination for President, isn’t the only potential top-of-the-ticket presence to hit the state. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker was here last weekend.
Just as with Booker, who is barnstorming battleground states ahead of Nov. 6, Biden’s two-day, three-stop Florida swing is intended to boost candidates and remind Florida voters that despite his age, the Delaware Democrat is a major player.
The language: familiar.
“This election is bigger than politics,” Biden said, as he has said in battlegrounds coast to coast.
“We used to be the shining city on the hill,” Biden said, driven “by the power of our example.”
Biden, as he said early on, has been traveling the country giving the same speech with regional variations: a textbook anti-Trump message designed to drive the vote out.
And in Jacksonville, it spurred some enthusiasm, with a brief “Run Joe Run” change breaking out at one point. Though as the speech bled past 30 minutes, the crowd started to trickle out.
Don’t forget Cory
U.S. Senator Cory Booker, New Jersey’s best hope for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, was in Jacksonville Saturday.
His first stop of the day found him at Edward Waters College in New Town, where he was part of the HBCU’s Homecoming Parade, along with supporters of Florida’s top Democratic candidates: Sen. Bill Nelson and gubernatorial candidate Gillum.
We spoke to Booker between meetings in Jacksonville via phone.
Booker noted he was “excited to support” Nelson and Gillum, two “inspiring leaders.”
Nelson, said Booker, is a “titan in the Senate,” and “to not have him return would be an outrageous injury.”
Gillum, meanwhile, is “one of the most exciting leaders in the country,” promising a “dramatic change” in Tallahassee, with a policy vision on health care and other matters that aligns with Booker.
When asked, Booker noted that 2020 concerns did not drive this trip.
“My focus is Nov. 6,” the Senator said, even as he is traveling “almost coast-to-coast” right now to “help as many people as I can” in the “most important midterm of my lifetime.”
Regional sheriffs tee off on Gillum
Republican gubernatorial nominee DeSantis took a page from the book of his dispatched primary rival Tuesday, with an early morning Jacksonville presser designed to highlight support from law enforcement.
Worth noting: Jacksonville is dealing with a continued multiyear upward trend in its murder rate, a similar phenomenon to the depictions of crime-ridden Tallahassee in Republican ads. High-profile mass shootings are becoming the norm here, including recent gunplay at a high school football game, a video game competition, and the shooting of six people within walking distance of the Jaguars’ game Sunday.
Included at the event: Jacksonville Sheriff Mike Williams, who attended DeSantis’ Sunday night debate in Tampa (Gillum “didn’t do anything tonight to calm the nerves of people rightfully concerned about public safety under his failed leadership,” Williams chided); and Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels, who questioned Democratic nominee Andrew Gillum “as a man” for signing the Dream Defenders pledge earlier this year.
The DeSantis campaign has sought to capitalize on Gillum’s signing of the Dream Defenders pledge (which Gillum claimed not to have signed in Sunday’s debate), and Tuesday was probably the most prominent push, with ad-ready footage from Republican sheriffs delineating what they see as stark differences between the candidates.
Sheriff Mike Prendergast of Citrus County noted that DeSantis “will not tolerate … racist hate groups who don’t support law enforcement officers.”
Sheriff Bobby Schultz of Gilchrist County echoed those thoughts, saying DeSantis “will not slap the face of law enforcement by supporting hate groups that do nothing but demonize law enforcement.”
Perhaps the bluntest Sheriff to speak, Gordon Smith of Bradford County, noted “you can’t make chicken salad out of chicken pocky,” referring to Gillum, who has “made a mess out of Tallahassee.”
While Daniels and Williams weren’t the hottest quotes, it’s clear that the two former JSO colleagues turned lead lawmen are essential to DeSantis’ electoral strategy.
Which, if DeSantis wins, will work out really well for them.
Lawson, Rutherford breezing to wins
Q3 continued the trend for Jacksonville’s Congressmen, as they dominated their long-shot challengers in the cash race.
First-term Reps. John Rutherford, a Republican and Al Lawson, a Democrat, each of whom in districts that are favorable regarding voter profile, also connected with donors in the period leading up to Sept. 30.
Rutherford, who represents Northeast Florida’s 4th Congressional District, ended Q3 with $430,130 on hand (of $730,000 raised), well above the $4,444 Democratic challenger Ges Selmont had.
The political action committees of corporations such as Boeing and Google ponied up, as did local power brokers like Gary Chartrand and Peter Rummell, and old friends like former State Attorney Angela Corey.
Rutherford, who said he wouldn’t bother debating Selmont because there was no point in giving him a platform, raised $132,930 on the quarter, spending just $20,123 of it.
Republicans comprise 281,000, or 49.8 percent of the district’s voters. There are now 150,237 Democratic voters, or 26.6 percent of district voters. NPAs and third-party voters comprise the balance.
The money race in the majority-Democrat Jacksonville-to-Tallahassee Congressional District 5 likewise seems to reflect where voters will go, with Lawson holding a strong lead over Republican Virginia Fuller.
Lawson exited September with $60,303 on hand (he spent heavily in a competitive primary against Jacksonville’s Alvin Brown). Fuller, who had previously said that she wasn’t fundraising, had just $1,864 at her disposal.
The quarter reflected an active August: receipts of $80,522 were exceeded by $151,379 of spending.
Yoho’s last ride
U.S. Congressman Ted Yoho, a quintessential Freedom Caucus Republican, looks poised for re-election to a fourth term from Florida’s 3rd Congressional District.
There won’t be a fifth.
“You can bank on that,” he told us Friday afternoon in Orange Park, after a campaign town hall.
But he’s likely not done this year if metrics are predictive.
As of the most recent fundraising report, Yoho had $328,257 of his $752,614 nest egg on hand. This compared favorably to Democratic opponent Yvonne Hayes Hinson, a former Gainesville city commissioner who had just $2,478 of $34,726 on hand.
The party split of the north-central Florida district, which includes portions of Alachua, Bradford, Clay, Marion, Putnam and Union counties, is likewise favorable for the incumbent. CD 3 has 200,504 Republicans, compared to 175,561 Democrats, with NPAs and third parties comprising the rest of the district’s 487,002 voters.
Yoho packed a backroom at a restaurant in Clay County’s biggest city, and he made no bones about where he stood: With Ron DeSantis and against Andrew Gillum, and with movement conservatives like Rep. Jim Jordan over the Paul Ryan wing of the party.
Yoho is confident that Republicans will retain the House, and if that’s the case, he may be positioned to play an important role on issues in the next two years no one would have predicted would be the case when he first ran in 2012.
One such issue: the failed U.S. War on Drugs.
Duggan levels up
As early in-person voting begins in Duval County, money is rapidly being spent in the expensive race for an open seat in House District 15.
Republican Wyman Duggan, per receipts that extend through Oct. 12, holds cash on hand lead over Democrat Tracye Polson.
Polson has aggressively fundraised, self-financed and has led the money race for most of the campaign, but the most recent finance report represents an outlier to that trend.
Duggan’s campaign account had just over $46,000 in it as of Oct. 12, with $9,549 raised the week before compared to $32,540 spent ($30,000 of that on television).
Duggan’s political committee still had resources as of Oct. 12, with $20,000 of new money the week before (and no spend) boosting that tally north of $37,000.
In addition to having roughly $83,000 for the home stretch, Duggan has also been the beneficiary of over $100,000 in television buys from the Republican Party of Florida, helping him to amplify his message that Polson, a social worker, is out of step with the Westside Jacksonville district.
Polson outraised and outspent Duggan regarding her campaign account during the week, bringing in $13,776 compared to $41,376 in expenditures (with $38,606 on television). The campaign account has just over $7,000 on hand.
Polson’s political committee likewise spent bigger than it raised: $400 brought in during the week, compared to $24,651 in expenditures (moved to the Florida Democratic Party). It has nearly $40,000 on hand.
Public safety narrative
The Jacksonville Jaguars were losing at home when news broke of six people shot just blocks from the stadium.
Shootings are nothing new to Jacksonville, often called the murder capital of the state. However, this one had a particular political weight, right down to the investigating sheriff, who was apparently in Tampa offering support to gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis.
Jacksonville’s shootings would find a global platform Sunday evening, as Democrat Andrew Gillum debated Republican Ron DeSantis on CNN.
Gillum, defending himself against DeSantis’ assertaion that Tallahassee is a hotbed of violent crime, noted the shooting in Jacksonville. That is, unfortunately, an undercount, as shootings happened elsewhere in the city.
Jacksonville, which has both a Republican Mayor and Sheriff who each endorsed DeSantis in the primary, has struggled for decades with its own murder rate.
That Sheriff, Mike Williams, pilloried Gillum on public safety on behalf of the DeSantis campaign, in a statement that dropped just minutes after the debate.
“Andrew Gillum hasn’t supported law enforcement, he signed an anti-police pledge, and he didn’t do anything tonight to calm the nerves of people rightfully concerned about public safety under his failed leadership,” Williams said.
Questions that Williams’ quote may have been pre-provided abounded, but per a picture from Attorney General Pam Bondi, Williams was at the CNN debate with sheriffs and the AG.
Mayor and the monster
St. Augustine Mayor Nancy Shaver faced a harrowing experience at a college symposium, per the St. Augustine Record.
“Authorities arrested a West Augustine man at a college symposium Thursday afternoon after he told the mayor to kill herself and then refused to leave … Cyrus Joseph Bowie, 41, went to an event at St. Johns River State College featuring Mayor Nancy Shaver, according to the report. Witnesses said he told Shaver several times things such as ‘kill yourself’ and ‘why don’t you kill yourself?’,” the Record reports.
Bowie also had a note conveying similar sentiments.
Shaver won her election in August, a three-way race in which she garnered 57 percent of the vote.
JEA Extended Play
Legislation is imminent for the city of Jacksonville to extend its agreement with municipal utility JEA, a contribution/funding formula that makes up roughly 10 percent of the city’s general fund budget.
The Interagency Agreement, last ratified in 2016 to extend through September 2021, would have two more years added if the City Council passes the legislation.
The timing is of greatest interest here. The renewed agreement comes at a time when the financial commitments of the utility and city are earning harder looks from rating agencies, which looked askance at moves to privatize the utility, leadership changes and most critically, attempts to shirk jointly-held obligations in 2008’s ill-fated Plant Vogtle nuclear plant deal.
The city issued a tough news release defending its moves after the Moody’s downgrade, but in reality, seems aware that it overplayed its hand, leading to the renewed agreement.
“Stable contribution policy through 2023 is viewed as a positive by rating agencies,” asserted an agenda item from an October JEA Board meeting.
Will it be enough of a positive, though?
Hyde says ‘thanks, but no thanks’
Former Jacksonville City Council President Kevin Hyde may be the interim president of Florida State College Jacksonville. But per the Jacksonville Daily Record, Hyde doesn’t want the permanent gig.
“It gets us to the next president, to serve as a bridge,” Hyde said when taking the interim gig.
Hyde, a partner with Foley and Lardner, will stay on through the transition. However, he apparently has no interest in a John Delaney/UNF style extended run at Jacksonville’s four-year college.
UNF recognized for energy, environmental leadership
The University of North Florida’s Skinner-Jones Hall, Building 4 has received Silver Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification by the U.S. Green Building Council.
As first reported by the Jacksonville Daily Record, the $30 million project involved the renovation of the former Skinner-Jones North and Skinner-Jones South with a four-story addition and lobby.
“This is another example of UNF’s commitment to constructing sustainable buildings,” Paul Stewart, campus planning, design and construction director, told the Record.
JAXPORT boasts record cruise numbers
Jaxport saw a record number of cruise passengers — nearly 200,000 people — in the last fiscal year, according to the Jacksonville Business Journal.
This number (199,899 to be exact) is good news for the multi-year agreement between JAXPORT and Carnival Cruise Lines signed earlier this year, the first for the Jacksonville Port Authority.
While the Carnival Elation sails year-round from Jaxport to the Bahamas, it will be replaced by the Carnival Ecstasy in May. Carnival has committed to providing service out of Jaxport through 2021 with possible extensions through 2027, writes the Journal.
With the continuation of cruise launches, JAXPORT will be upgrading both parking and its terminal, including a remodeled VIP Lounge and better boarding facilities.
“We continue to grow our reputation with vacationers throughout the Southeast U.S. and beyond,” Jaxport CEO Eric Green said in a statement released last week. “Cruise is a benefit to all of Jacksonville as visitors get a taste of what our region offers and then choose to return again and again.”
Crowley takes lead with ‘cornerstone’ liquid natural gas vessels
Jacksonville-based Crowley Maritime Corp. is taking the lead with liquefied natural gas-powered vessels, christening the El Coqui this week at the JAXPORT cruise terminal.
The newly christened 720-ft. vessel is now making its fully loaded maiden voyage to Puerto Rico.
As per the Jacksonville Business Journal, El Coqui and its sister ship, the Taino, are the world’s first LNG-powered ships capable of carrying containers as well as roll-on/roll-off cargo. The pair have become the “cornerstone” of Crowley’s $3 billion, multi-year investment into LNG and Puerto Rico trading lanes.
“It’s a culmination of many, many years of hard work, many years of transition and change for our company,” CEO Tom Crowley told the Journal. “This is by far the biggest challenge we’ve taken on.”
To handle the new vessels, Crowley made a series of infrastructure changes to its terminals in Jacksonville and San Juan, Puerto Rico, working with regulators on safety and training protocols as well as partnering with Eagle LNG to build an LNG supply chain in Jacksonville.
“We have really set the stage for the globe of how to do it,” Crowley added. “There will be plenty of folks coming through Jacksonville, touring the ship, touring the facility to see how it’s done … There’s no question in my mind that long-term, liquefied natural gas will be the preferred fuel.”
Heading to London, Jaguars in free fall
What a difference a month makes. After the Jaguars’ home opening win against the Patriots on September 16, they stood 2-0 and meeting the expectations of a fan base feeling it was “Super Bowl or bust.”
Fast forward to October 25 and the season is approaching “bust” status. They have lost four of five games and, in those losses, the Jaguars never held the lead.
Jacksonville was able to put only 34 points on the scoreboard during those offensive-challenged contests. Thankfully, the New York Jets were on the schedule, allowing the Jags to break up the points drought with a 31-12 romp on September 30.
In Sunday’s 20-7 home loss to Houston, quarterback Blake Bortles was benched in favor of Cody Kessler. That and the overall poor play on both sides of the ball put some over the top leading to a locker room altercation.
“You all see how it is. It is no secret what’s going on here right now,” said cornerback Jalen Ramsey, who is never at a loss for words. “Ain’t nobody going to say it because we can’t, but it ain’t no secret what’s going on and it ain’t right, right now.”
This week is the team’s annual trip to London, this time to take on the defending Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles, who are also a disappointing 3-4. The plane carrying the team over the pond carried a lot of baggage; the team’s luggage and equipment as well as the baggage currently in the heads of the players and coaches.
Coach Doug Marrone is trying to put the focus of the team’s troubles on himself and away from the players on the field.
“When people say, ‘What’s going on? Why does this team look different? What’s the situation?’ I always say the first thing that comes to mind, which is, ‘I have to do a better job and it comes to me,’” Marrone said. “For me, that’s what I have to do. I have to do a better job with this team in all areas — coaching all-around.”
Kickoff Sunday is 9:30 a.m. Eastern time.
