Melissa Ross
Dark horse mayoral candidate Bill Bishop is banking on an underdog appeal and policy wonk specificity as he mounts an insurgent’s challenge to incumbent Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown and extremely well-funded GOP establishment favorite Lenny Curry.
Bishop, an architect and former president of the Jacksonville City Council, has peeled off a few GOP endorsements in recent days, and says he has a strategy to make it past the March unitary election and move ahead to the May runoff, which will feature the two top vote-getters.
While Brown and Curry have each amassed campaign war chests in the $2 million range, the bare-bones Bishop operation is relying on a more guerrilla approach, using social media, a bipartisan platform, and most important, plain talk to reach voters.
“The best way to get your message out is to answer questions, and be specific about what you believe,” says Bishop. “And so far that’s becoming a differentiator in this race because my opponents don’t seem to want to do that. And I just believe that people want to hear straight answers and they appreciate that when it’s done. And I think that will resonate.”
It was a pointed shot at both Brown and Curry’s vague responses on the campaign trail to a number of hot-button issues, most notably the thorny question of whether Jacksonville should update its human rights ordinance to protect the city’s LGBT population from discrimination in jobs, housing and accommodations.
Jacksonville is one of the only major U.S. cities not to have made that change. A vote on the HRO failed by 1 vote several years ago. Now Bishop, a Republican, is winning support from some Democrats because of his willingness to go on the record about the issue, saying he’s for updating the language.
“I look at it from the fundamentals of what our country is all about- which is, all people are created equal. This isn’t a liberal/conservative issue, it’s simply an issue of what’s right. And we should be long past the point of discriminating against somebody because of who or what they are.”
Bishop also strikes somewhat of a progressive tone on other questions, ranging from solar power – “We need to change our methods for buying and distributing it, and JEA needs to make its policy more user-friendly,” he says, to bike paths- “I helped get a bike/pedestrian corridor study put together from the beaches to downtown. We just need a plan in place to do it.”
But his top issue and area of expertise is pension reform, which he calls Jacksonville’s top priority.
“Our unfunded pension liability is keeping us from doing anything else because it consumes so much of our tax resources. And until we get that under control, we can’t have an intelligent conversation about what else we want our city government to provide. That is Job #1,” he says.
He’s called for a half-cent sales tax to address the pension issue, strikingly, not shying away from advocating a tax increase.
“At the end of the day, you have to do something to address issues. And if you can’t do what you say you’re going to do, what’s the point?”
Bishop chuckles when reminded of the old adage, ‘Democrats fall in love. Republicans fall in line.’ He admits his refusal to fall in line behind the better-funded candidate has led to suggestions from some in his party that he step aside and clear the path for Curry to take on Brown.
“Sure, there were people asking me, do I really know what I’m doing? Do I really want to do this? But it was probably the softest attempt that I’ve ever experienced. It was really a half-hearted at best effort to try to get me to step down,” he said.
