Jacksonville Special Election hopefuls feud over fundraising in final debate

To the wire: Nick Howland and Tracye Polson are in a virtual dead heat.

Voting is ongoing in the Special Election to fill an unexpired term in the Jacksonville City Council at-large Group 3 seat, and the final debate of the campaign saw the candidates lock horns on the issue of campaign finance.

Democrat Tracye Polson and Republican Nick Howland, who have raised and spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the race, agreed Friday on the need to aggressively fundraise and spend. But they seemed to diverge on what fundraising was acceptable during a debate at First Coast Tiger Bay.

Polson defended her vigorous self-funding.

“About 56% of the money I have spent on this campaign is my money,” Polson said of the roughly $483,000 reported between her campaign account and her political committee through Jan. 31, the last date for which fundraising records are available.

“The rest of the money was from donors, 97% of whom are from Jacksonville,” Polson said, with just a “few from outside.”

“When you run for office, what you have to do is raise a lot of money, unfortunately,” Polson said. “I have friends and family and colleagues all across this country and they gave me money.”

“We went from zero to 100 overnight,” Polson added, “so I knew I would have to put my own resources into this.”

Howland agreed, saying “you have to raise a lot of money to run a campaign like this, in a sprint like we’re in right now.”

Howland, heavily backed by business interests and the Republican establishment, credited “individuals and businesses” with his nest egg thus far, more than $340,000 raised through the end of January.

“We’ve had to raise all the way up until the last minute,” Howland added, suggesting the post-campaign fundraising reports, filed next month, will show an infusion of stretch-run cash.

Polson pounced.

“We all know, if you read the finance reports, Mr. Howland has dark money. What that means is he’s accepted a lot of money from what we call PACs, political committees that go to the same person and the same address,” Polson charged. She argued that developers, lobbyists and others who will “have business before the City Council” also support him.

“There’s nothing dark about that money,” Howland countered. “You can look up every single PAC that contributed to my campaign and find out who contributed to those PACs.”

Howland’s Florida Freedom PAC political committee, registered on the state level, features one political committee contribution on the current report: a $10,000 contribution from Conservatives for Principled Leadership, a political committee associated with House Speaker-designate Paul Renner.

However, Howland’s campaign account did see donations from political committees sharing a treasurer with his own, including Building Florida’s Future, Florida Citizens for Change and Growing Florida’s Economy, all of which have raised and spent big money not traceable to an original source in any meaningful sense.

Howland has reported roughly $340,000 in fundraising as of the end of January between his political committee and his campaign account.

Turnout is nearing 10%, with Democrats holding a little more than a 2,300-vote advantage.

Overall, Democrats make up 46% of the turnout so far and Republicans 43%. Democrats have a vote-by-mail advantage, but thus far Republicans have performed better in in-person early voting.

Democrats hope to change that this weekend. Gubernatorial candidates Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried and Sen. Annette Taddeo will campaign with Polson.

Early voting goes through Sunday, with Election Day being Tuesday. And if one poll is any indication, the race will be tight.

University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab conducted an email poll of the Special Election and found Polson and Howland each had 50% support, with partisans sticking with their parties.

Just 3% of Republicans polled picked Polson and only 4% of Democrats went with Howland.

One metric to watch: Howland dominated Polson with no party affiliation (NPA) voters polled. The survey showed 64% picked Howland, with 36% preferring his Democratic opponent.