North is south and south is north. They say the further north in Florida you go, the further south you get. Not anymore.
Northern Florida’s anchor city (and largest) may be getting more liberal than southern Florida. They haven’t elected a Democrat for their mayor since 2011. With Republican Francis Suarez having a foothold as Miami’s mayor, Democrats see the long, difficult road of getting Florida back through Jacksonville.
The mayoral election that just happened speaks volumes.
Right now, two candidates are heading into a runoff, but Democrat Donna Deegan got almost 40% of the vote, while the second place finisher, Republican-registered Chamber of Commerce chief Daniel Davis, got almost 25%. He has a big gap to make up for should he successfully pull off his insurgent bid.
I say insurgent because candidate quality matters, and Davis wasn’t expected to make it to the runoff. The original GOP frontrunner was a councilwoman named LeAnna Cumber. Her campaign deflated when it was discovered that her husband attempted to gain control of the city’s power system, one of nine bidders ultimately rejected, through his private equity firm. These bids would have to be approved by the city council. When the council was asked if any members had any family members making these bids, Cumber remained mum, and her opponents jumped on that after some deep digging. She finished with less than 8% of the vote.
The beneficiary has been Davis, a far less known quantity in the city than Cumber. Davis was a former state representative, but he hasn’t been on the ballot for eleven years. While he has called for lower city taxes and for more police on the street, as crime has slowly and steadily been ticking up (though only about 10% as badly as the other major cities in the US), he has very little name recognition.
Former local TV news anchor Donna Deegan does. She was the weeknight news anchor in Jacksonville for almost twenty years. She left her TV gig to battle cancer, kicked it, and started a foundation for cancer cure research.
On her website, Deegan plays it safe. She says she wants dramatically improved infrastructure, but doesn’t mention that taxes will be needed to be raised to do it. And she makes absolutely no mention of the crime issue. None. She’s previously stated she wants to remove Confederate monuments, but she’s been mum on that issue as of recent months. She’s campaigning as a generic, non radical Democrat.
The only runoff poll, done about a month before the election, showed Deegan above the magic 50% needed to win at 51%, with Davis at a paltry 26%. If Deegan polls this off, expect Dems to see Florida as a battleground state yet again, and it wouldn’t be wise to laugh off that notion.
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