A.G. Gancarski
With the controversy of the mechanics of the Duval County Republican Party endorsement fading into the rearview mirror, Jacksonville mayoral candidate Lenny Curry keeps on running … in more ways than one.
On Saturday, the Republican did what so many Jacksonville residents do on the weekends — run a 5K with his wife and friends. Specifically, the 5K Duck Pond Dash, “a tour of one of the prettiest neighborhoods in Jacksonville, passing through beautiful Granada, looping around Granada Park, and ultimately the famous ‘Duckpond’.”
Curry did well in this race. But he didn’t beat everyone. One runner that bested the former RPOF Chair: Cal Leonard, a 9-year-old kid in a Florida State hoodie, whom Curry described as a “fast kid on the route” who pushed him to run the 5K in “23 minutes and change.”
The tweet was favorited by one person… but that’s not all the traction the candidate got out of it.
One of Curry’s strengths in this race has been the ability to synergize moments like this: authentic snapshots of community interactions that have the ability to “go viral.” Jacksonville’s running community, which seems to grow exponentially on a year-by-year basis, is generally a very happy group that tends to favor public figures that embrace it.
Curry’s tweet of his picture with Leonard did not go viral on Twitter. Facebook, however, was a different matter.
Cal Leonard’s mother, Kara Citrano-Leonard (with whom this writer went to both grade school and high school), saw Curry’s Tweet and posted about the experience.
“Sugar Cal ran a 5K this morning. On the route he noticed Lenny Curry (running for Mayor of Jacksonville). Cal asked him ‘are you Lenny Curry’ and he said yes, I am! Apparently Cal was pushing him and they finished together. Lenny came and found Eddie and me after the race to tell us what a sweet boy he was and wanted to tweet out a picture of them. Cal thinks he is now famous!!!”
For a 9-year-old boy, running with the possible Future Mayor of Jacksonville, this is one of those events that won’t soon be forgotten. The same can be said for his parents, and his parents’ friends. Kara posted this message on Saturday afternoon; by Sunday morning, it already had over 150 likes and a few dozen comments from friends and family, more than one of which said that person would vote for Curry.
These are exactly the kinds of voters that a candidate like Curry will rely upon for victory in the upcoming mayoral race. Family people, the vast majority of them community-oriented Catholics, who look to Curry as someone who shares their values. That is a hard impression to shake, and even the inside-baseball reporting on events like the Duval REC meeting last week won’t shake it.
If candidates want to meet voters, there is no better place to do it than on distance runs. The “runner’s high” phenomenon is documented, and the positive energy in a crowd during a road race is like nothing else anywhere in town.
The Jacksonville running season is a year-round thing; the next significant event in terms of turnout is the Gate River Run, the biggest 15K race in the United States and the home of the USA 15K Championship. 24,000 runners took it on last year.
Writing as a two-time Gate River Run finisher (we won’t discuss times here), it is a challenging race once you get past Mile 6 or so. Curry’s performance in the 5K (as well as in the #TreadmillTuesday event at a local YMCA, in which he did four miles in 30 minutes) suggest that he will perform respectably in terms of times.
More important for him, though, will be the visibility he gains if he runs the River Run. Thousands of happy people, all of whom are enjoying one of the best road races in the country in what probably will be perfect running weather, will see him in his campaign shirt, running the Hart Bridge just like them. Curry’s literature talks about “servant leadership,” which translates to being “first among equals”; there is nothing quite as communitarian in Jacksonville as a road race, and though there is no poll that factors in the “runner vote,” the more of these events Curry does, the more of that vote he will have.
All of this is to say that Bill Bishop and Alvin Brown may need to pull out their running shoes themselves. Otherwise, the difference in the March 24 election may well come down to races run on weekends before the vote.
