Jacksonville Mayor Thread

[Dereich]

Alvin Brown overwhelmingly won "Real Jacksonville". Unless, of course, only suburban and exurban voters are "real". This shouldn't have much of an impact on any future election, except maybe to point out that 2% of the city's electorate won't vote for a religious/tea party nutjob but will support literally any other Republican put in front of them.

Anyway, Curry ran a godawful campaign, which is hilarious since he's supposed to be better than anybody at that as leader of the FLGOP. He came off during the campaign as untrustworthy, bland, unwilling to make unpopular and necessary decisions, and tone deaf. Mayor Brown and Bill Bishop were both more energetic and dynamic personalities. Curry won because Brown's domineering personality combined with a lack of accomplishments kept some of his biggest supporters from last time (the business community, rich whites) from embracing his campaign to the extent that they did last election. The final choice was between someone who never went beyond generic R or an incumbent who was perceived to care more about his image than the city. I think the lesson here is that for even an above average Democrat to win here they need to have a fatally flawed Republican opponent. That lesson could probably apply for most statewide races as well.

I'll be interested to see what Brown does next. From what I understand, his initial mayoral campaign was more about laying the groundwork for a run against Corrine Brown. I hope he does go that way; Corrine is just an awful Congresswoman and Brown would be immeasurably better.

Also, just in case any is interested, the race for Sheriff ended similarly: Williams, the white Republican, beat Jefferson, the black Democrat, by about the same margin. That race is a bit easier to explain: the Republican was the next in line at the sheriff's office and the Democrat had no leadership experience. 

My precinct voted Alvin Brown (DEM) 27.51% Lenny Curry (REP) 72.49%. I voted for Curry (couldn't justify a vote for Brown, even if Curry is awful) and voted for Jefferson for Sheriff.