Donna Deegan begins making her case to Northeast Florida voters

Donna Deegan takes a solid lead in the Jacksonville mayoral race.

Democrat Donna Deegan knows she faces long odds in her bid to flip Florida’s 4th Congressional District from red to blue.

A Monday campaign appearance saw her just outside of her district, at Edward Waters College for a “meet and greet.”

Deegan, should she win the primary in 2020, will face well-known incumbent U.S. Rep. John Rutherford in the General Election.

GOP voters comprise 286,013 of the district’s 577,173 registered voters, compared to 155,073 Democrats, with independents and third-party registrants making up the balance.

Deegan, contrary to what some might think, is acutely aware of the partisan makeup of the district. But she is undeterred, Deegan told a crowd of about 50 Monday night.

The operation has been local thus far. Her campaign manager, Erica Connor, is an attorney who has never run a campaign before, except for her own successful bid for the St. Johns County Soil and Water Board.

National operations, such as the DCCC, have yet to come calling. For other candidates, this may be more of a problem than it has been for Deegan, known well in Northeast Florida for her television journalism, for surviving cancer three times and starting a foundation and a marathon to raise money for the cure.

Republican women have reached out; they are “frustrated with the ugliness” of the President Donald Trump era, Deegan says.

Deegan has also been driven by that, appalled by the “deceit” of the current President. That inspired her into political activism in recent years, she said.

Indeed, famous for her “truth tests” on political ads when anchoring First Coast News, Deegan says she has “no problem speaking truth to power.”

However, those expecting that to correlate to radical policy proposals will be disappointed.

On health care, for example, she takes a middle road by Democratic standards, seeing the Affordable Care Act as able to be improved, as a bridge perhaps to some form of universal health care.

On climate change, she advocates resiliency, a contrast to an incumbent “who thinks [climate change] is a hoax.”

On guns, Deegan invokes “women who are afraid to send their kids to school,” advocating for universal background checks … something she notes Rutherford once backed.

But nothing approaching confiscation, even as some will parse her call to get “weapons of war off of our streets.”

Elections, meanwhile, should be publicly financed.

Deegan notes that “corporate PAC money” is funding Rutherford’s operation.

In the third quarter of 2019, Rutherford reported just over $70,000 raised, giving him $228,900 raised for the election cycle, and $443,376 on hand.

The vast majority of the funds raised in the quarter came from corporate political action committees, or PACs.

Looking around the room at Edward Waters, Deegan told those on hand that she’d “take this any day.”

Deegan raised $85,000 in her first day of fundraising, though she hasn’t trumpeted numbers since that media release dropped.

Florida’s 4th Congressional District includes Nassau County, a gerrymandered chunk of Duval, and northern St. Johns County. It has been Republican since maps drawn after the 1990 census.

The district evolved from what was Blue Dog Democrat U.S. Rep. Charlie Bennett‘s fiefdom for decades, with Republican Reps. Tillie Fowler and Ander Crenshaw combining to serve nearly a quarter-century before Crenshaw retired in 2016.