Alvin Brown and Bill Bishop no show St. Paul AME forum

There are a lot of candidate forums in Jacksonville. But for sheer magnitude and importance, it’s hard to top the St. Paul AME Church forum. This is especially true for city wide candidates who hope to reach out to African American voters.

Tonight, people tell me, was the liveliest yet. Hundreds of likely voters jammed the hall full; the crowd was standing room only even before the official 6:00 start of the public presentations and question and answer sessions for Mayor, Supervisor of Elections, and Sheriff.

There wasn’t an empty seat to be had. Except on the Mayoral panel, where there were two, since Mayor Alvin Brown and Bill Bishop apparently had other plans.

Bishop had a “fundraiser/meet-greet in Mandarin” — an hour drive from Northwest Jacksonville. Curiously, he was there for at least the first part of the “meet the candidate” hour from 5 to 6. His absence was noted by people in the room.

But not nearly so much as that of Mayor Alvin Brown, whose radio ads are currently ubiquitous on urban radio.

Mayor Brown had an event at City Hall at the same time honoring “African American trailblazers”, including H.T. Rhim, who extolled Brown for his commitment to “middle school football” and other things in that ad. However, according to Denise Lee, the longtime City Council stalwart who hosted the event, the schedule conflict was created recently.

“Initially, that affair was scheduled for the 19th — they changed it,” said Lee, who asserts that people who showed up to the AME Church tonight had been invited to the event at City Hall, but decided to come to the Candidate Forum, because it was more important.

When I asked Lee if Mayor Brown was taking the African-American community for granted by not showing up, she gave a non-answer that in reality was a damning indictment.

“It’s inappropriate for me as a public official to answer this question,” she said, adding that “not to answer answers the question.”

Omega Allen, not being a public official, was at complete liberty to opine as to the Brown no-show.

“I believe that a gathering of this magnitude in the African-American community warranted respect and participation,” she said, calling the no-show a “travesty”.

“This was important enough to reschedule anything” not related to the most important matters of city government, she went on to tell me.

An attendee to the forum, Tommie Thomas, went further, saying that Brown was “sissified” for not attending, and she thought the Mayor’s no-show was him effectively saying “to Hell with you” to his base.

Whether that’s true or not, I can’t say. Odds are, given the expected media saturation from the Brown camp in the weeks and, God help us all, months ahead, this will be forgotten by most who noticed tonight.

Lee’s comments throughout the event were full of language that basically exhorted voters not to choose candidates from a “slip of paper someone gives you”, instead “listening to people on your own and vote your conscience”.

As a measure of Lee’s commitment to the event, moderator Jerry Holland mentioned that he had called a candidate six times to ensure that candidate would show up. When asked why, Holland said “because Denise Lee called us twenty times” to make sure that job was done.

That was a measure of how important participation in this event was.

Beyond the spectacle of the empty seats in the Mayoral panel, the event was full of two hours of necessary and vital debate, which almost certainly was more interesting than the pallid television debates that Duval County voters will be treated to in the coming weeks.

Omega Allen and Lenny Curry both got strong reactions from the crowd, with the former showing that she is a more serious candidate than many give her credit for being, and the latter doing an admirable job presenting market conservative principles.

Supervisor of Elections candidates Tracie Davis and Mike Hogan, meanwhile, had a spirited debate, in which both energetically made strong cases for their qualifications to take over from Jerry Holland.

And the six Sheriff’s candidates that showed up — Republicans Mike Williams, Jimmy Holderfield, Jay Farhat, and Lonnie McDonald, along with Democrats Tony Cummings and Ken Jefferson — all did a credible job explaining their positions.

Sadly, none of that will be the story.

The no-shows by the Mayor and the former Council President will be.

And it clearly could have been avoided.

Perhaps if Billie Tucker had moderated the event, Toney Sleiman would have driven the Mayor to Northwest Jax.