Kevin Meerschaert
Jacksonville mayoral candidate Republican Bill Bishop may not be getting support from party leaders or big donors, but he is putting together a coalition of GOP moderates and Democrats and independents who have become disillusioned with incumbent Alvin Brown.
Some of those Democrats organized a rally Sunday for Bishop at Memorial Park in the city’s Riverside neighborhood. Many of the participants supported Brown when he narrowly defeated Mike Hogan to become Jacksonville’s first African-American mayor and the first Democrat to win the office in 20 years.
Four years ago, Democrat Wayne Wood knocked on doors for Brown. However, he organized the Sunday rally for Bishop and spread the word via Facebook.
Wood says Bishop’s support crosses party lines because he’s the only candidate who is answering tough questions about the city’s future and not spending his time trashing the other candidates.
“In the time since we held a rally for Alvin Brown in this same park (four years ago) things have changed” Wood said. “The city has not moved forward in ways many of us wanted to.”
Much of the disappointment with Brown has come from his lack of support two years ago for an amendment to the city’s Human Rights Ordinance to add sexual orientation on the list of protected classes. Bishop, who voted for the amendment when he was president of the City Council has said getting the amendment approved would be a top priority of his administration.
Local attorney and LBGT rights activist Jimmy Midyette created the Facebook page “Democrats Support Bill Bishop for Mayor.” Midyette said the mayor’s lack of support for the amendment and what is thought by many gay rights supporters to be back-room dealing to ensure the bill never got to Brown’s desk as the main reason they aren’t supporting him this time around.
“Even absent that,” Midyette said, “there was certainly no leadership, even the silence was very off putting.”
The Bishop supporters acknowledge it’s going to be difficult to get enough votes to make it past the first election on March 24. Bishop has raised only a fraction of what frontrunners Brown and former Florida GOP chairman Lenny Curry have raised. Wood said it will take about 42,000 votes to make it to the second general election in May.
In Jacksonville, the top two candidates regardless of party move on to the second election unless someone wins over 50-percent of the vote in the primary.
Bishop said he thinks his bipartisan support comes from voters who understand there isn’t a Republican or Demcratic way to provide services like filling potholes to finding a solution to the city’s pension problems.
