Duval GOP Chair Dean Black talks Duval going red, what it means for path forward

Dean Black’s away and critics decided to play.

This November was a watershed election for Duval County Republicans, given that statewide candidates Donald Trump and Rick Scott both won the county, while Reggie Blount won election to the School Board in a Westside Jacksonville district.

Dean Black, the outgoing three-term Chair of the local party, says none of that was an accident, with superior organization and long-term planning coupled with rigorous voter outreach driving the result, and spotlighting a path forward for the resurgent Republican Party.

“Ever since I became Chairman, the single thing I have focused on is voter registration,” Black said. “When I became Chair at the end of 2018 and going into 2019, as we were getting operations going, the Democrats achieved a lead in voter registration of over 40,000. Today it’s down to 11,000, and that’s the lowest plurality Democrat lead in history. And the size of the army you bring to the field matters.”

The army drives turnout, and Black notes that despite a slight registration edge for Democrats, Republicans win the battle of “pure raw voter turnout.” He expects that to continue, aided by aggressive fundraising; Black notes he’s raised “millions and millions of dollars” to that end.

That plays out in nominally nonpartisan races, he noted, such as conservative Reggie Blount’s win in a Duval County School Board race over Hank Rogers, who was backed by Duval Democrats.

The GOP decided to “get involved” in School Board contests late last decade, making a “long-term strategic play” to flip a Board that was dominated by left-of-center politicians to what Black calls a “5-2 conservative majority.”

“We spend money on those races. We back those candidates. We send mailers for them. We did for Reggie,” Black explained.

“There were waves of text messages going out to Republicans telling Republicans who the Republican is, this is who you should vote for, and then we help raise money for them. We may do that through political committees. We may give them direct contributions, you know, and some or all of those things. So the idea that they’re nonpartisan is, they’re not nonpartisan to us anymore. We directly engage in them.”

Black also addressed the highest-profile political loss during his tenure, when Democrat Donna Deegan won the Jacksonville Mayor’s race in 2023.

He does not expect history to repeat, calling her a “lame duck Mayor” and suggesting Republicans have learned from what happened to fracture their turnout last year.

“What we had at the top of the ticket was really the apocalypse. And it’s a circumstance that’s not likely to repeat itself either because it’s odd to have two candidates each able to raise so many millions of dollars,” Black said of Republican candidates LeAnna Cumber and Daniel Davis.

“Normally there does become a clearer front-runner. As the election progresses, it becomes clear who’s going to be able to build the large, well-developed coalition that could possibly carry to victory. And because of the way the voter registration is split between Democrats and Republicans (in this) true battleground county, usually you will have an emergent Republican leader and one who is a Democrat, and that’ll be what you get on the runoff.”

In 2023, both Cumber and Davis had, per Black, a “highly unusual fundraising ability,” spending “$9 million or $10 million in the media market” on negative ads “telling everybody how bad Republicans are.” 

“And then when the open Primary is over, absentee ballots dropped two weeks after that. There’s no time to recover because you’re voting again almost immediately. And it’s a circumstance that isn’t likely to repeat itself. It hasn’t happened before, probably won’t happen again.” 

Yet the next mayoral election isn’t until 2027, and for the next three years, Jacksonville has a Democratic Mayor with a poor record of bringing home appropriations wins from Tallahassee for City Hall’s direct priorities.

Deegan also accused President-elect Donald Trump of looking to put illegal immigrants in “concentration camp-like situations,” leading now-Republican Sen. Randy Fine to vow the city will be cut off from state appropriations during Deegan’s time in office, and obviously fracturing the relationship with the incoming administration as well.

Black is confident that the “strong delegation” of Republicans from Duval County will bring back money for local priorities, but cautioned Deegan against continued intemperance during her remaining time in office, including comments he sees as less than supportive of police.

“It sure would be helpful if we had a competent Mayor that wasn’t continuously embarrassing our city fighting with law enforcement,” Black said. I’m not sure if she just holds the police in ill regard or, or utter contempt, but we just don’t have a good Mayor and we’re going to fix that.”