Anna Brosche brings fresh face for Jacksonville City Council

With the general election just five weeks away, Jacksonville residents are starting to get to know the candidates as they prepare to choose their city officials. A lot of races present choices without much real ideological difference. One race where the delineation is stark, though: the At-Large Group 1 City Council race, in which an exciting new face — Anna Brosche — challenges one of the most idiosyncratic Democrats anywhere in Florida, the Rev. Kim Daniels.

Brosche, a Republican, is one of three challengers for Daniels’ seat — the others being fellow Republican David Taylor and Democrat Terry Reed. Brosche, though, has the most impressive résumé and list of endorsements. She has been endorsed by University of North Florida President and former Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney, as well as JAXBIZ, Northeast Florida Builders Association, the Florida First Coast Chapter of the Associated Builders and Contractors, NAIOP of Northeast Florida, the Northeast Florida Association of Realtors, Filipino-American Community Council of Northeast Florida and the North Florida Central Labor Council.

It’s an impressive list of endorsements for Brosche, who by all accounts is an impressive candidate. Brosche, a managing shareholder at Ennis Pellum & Associates, is chairwoman of the United Way of Northeast Florida board of directors and is a board member of the University of North Florida Foundation and the Ritz Chamber Music Society. The Westside resident also has been on the boards of the JAX Chamber, the JAX Chamber Foundation, and as Advisory Board Chair for the Jacksonville Women’s Business Center.

Brosche’s latest TV commercial, her second of the campaign, opens with a majestic orchestral introduction, as her husband, Navy Reserve Lt. Commander Dave Brosche, sets the patriotic tone by telling viewers “I’m a military man, and I know how important our armed forces are to Jacksonville. Our elected leaders should too. My wife, Anna Brosche, is running for City Council, and she recognizes this importance.”

The candidate then says, “My dad retired from the Navy, and I’m proud to be married to a naval officer. Service is a strong part of our family culture. I will bring that same commitment to service to the City Council.”

The ad concludes with the Brosches in her office and the candidate’s husband’s voiceover saying, “Anna will work hard to create jobs, develop our workforce and improve our quality of life.” They’re all themes aligned with establishment Jacksonville and the priorities of her endorsers.

Brosche’s messaging is resonating with the donor class. With more than $155,000 banked, she has raised more money than all candidates combined — including the controversial incumbent, who recently has been under fire over suspicions about allocation of campaign funds.

As reported this month in Folio Weekly, the incumbent saw fit to buy $4,000 of campaign advertising in a publication, Shofar Magazine, which didn’t seem to be for her campaign at all. Rather, Daniels chose to promote her book, The Demon Dictionary.

In the magazine’s Spring 2014 issue, Daniels — the founder of Spoken Word Ministries, Kimberly Daniels Ministries International and Rhema Way City Church — promotes her new book in an essay headlined “The Demon Dictionary Is Released!” In it, she thanks every “Commander of the Morning” who has helped the book “find favor” with Walmart’s distribution arm, asking that every “Commander” order “1-5 Demon Dictionaries to plant a seed in someone’s life,” as she needs help to “penetrate the marketplace for Jesus.”

Daniels encourages readers to “not be afraid of the dark world. ‘We ought to be afraid of smoking cigarettes, marijuana, lying and cheating, and treating others wrong. We ought to afraid [sic] of living like hellions, and not being equipped by God to deal with situations without being suicidal, without being checked into mental institutions.'”

“The demon dictionary,” she continues, “gives believers spiritual secret intelligence on the devil that goes as far as to reveal ‘how our enemy thinks.’ We cannot know the mind Christ [sic] but we can have the mind of Christ. Through God’s word He gives us insight on how the enemy thinks so that we can be ahead of the game and out-think him.”

(Daniels’ The Demon Dictionary: Know Your Enemy. Learn His Strategies. DEFEAT HIM! is published by Charisma House and retails in paperback for $11.99 at ChristianBook.com. The first in a three-volume series, it is described as an “in-depth glossary and study guide on demons [that] includes terminology, explanations, and examples of occult activity and cultic culture” that will “build your spiritual vocabulary, increase your knowledge of cultic and demonic words, names, places, and things, [and] bring light to areas of your life that the enemy wants to remain dark.”)

Because of this and other issues, such as her nonsupport of expanding Jacksonville’s Human Rights Ordinance to include protections of the LGBT community, Daniels is not receiving the expected support from Democratic activists. Brosche, in accordance with the anti-discrimination position of the Jax Chamber, supports a “fully inclusive HRO,” according to local activist group Change4Jax.org.

Ironically, this may lead to the local tea party backing the Democratic incumbent. The First Coast Tea Party posted this message to its Facebook page this past week regarding HRO supporters currently running for office.

[The HRO] will be back and take a look at the candidates WHO SUPPORT a FULLY INCLUSIVE HRO CHANGE PROTECTING LGBT.

IF YOU REMEMBER THIS WAS A HUGE ISSUE AS IT WAS NOT WHAT IT APPEARED TO BE ON THE SURFACE. Big money. Outside forces and local big business …
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU VOTE FOR.

Jacksonville politics are always interesting, and out of all of the council races, this might be the one most confounding to outside political observers. Daniels has a network of support that cannot be discounted, yet the political establishment and social issue activists are energizing in favor of the challenger, who seems to have a unique ability to address the concerns of both the donor class and the activist class.

Tellingly, the proposal to expand protections to the LGBT community is advocated staunchly by former Republican mayor Delaney (as it was when the legislation was considered three years ago). Delaney told the Times-Union last week that “an anti-discrimination ordinance, a lot of young people are appalled that we can’t pass that.”