A.G. Gancarski
The race in Jacksonville City Council District 14 sees Democrats Sunny Gettinger and Jimmy Peluso battling to make the May runoff.
Though 14 is plurality Republican, both candidates have run to win. Gettinger has raised well over $100,000, and Peluso has brought in over $55,000.
While both trail Republican Randy DeFoor, who with $200,000 raised is now running a television ad on broadcast and cable, only one of them has been the target of a negative mailpiece.
A state-level political committee (Florida Shining) weighed into the contest this week with a mailpiece attacking, on one side, “liberal Democrat” Peluso. (The other side of the paper fragged Republican Henry Mooneyhan).
Peluso, described as a “Tallahassee lobbyist pushing special interest agendas,” brandished the document early in a Tuesday evening forum at Riverside bar Rain Dogs.
“I’m sorry to say it’s true,” Peluso said to laughter from the partisan crowd. “They’re attacking me for a reason … to divide and conquer.”
Peluso and his advocates have contended that he is the more electable of the two Democrats. The argument is that his military background will play better in enclaves like Ortega and Argyle Forest, and that Gettinger’s appeal is largely restricted to the more liberal areas in the northern part of the district.
Or, as one Peluso supporter put it, the people who support him are the kind who shower after work and not before.
“It’s not so much that I think I’m the only one,” Peluso was asked, but he brought up his knowledge of “permitting” and “how a meeting is held” as unique value adds.
Gettinger, a former chair of Riverside-Avondale Preservation with degrees from Yale and Harvard, may not find that knowledge particularly esoteric.
Peluso noted that he expects a vote model favorable to Republicans on the March ballot, which isn’t a stretch given the lack of a Democratic candidate for Mayor.
Gettinger said that was “inside baseball.”
However, with two Democrats in the race, and the reality that both won’t make it to March, maybe that’s the game District 14 voters will consider.
