Jacksonville University hosted a mayoral debate between the seven candidates vying for election this spring. They were placed in alphabetical order: Omega Allen, LeAnna Cumber, Daniel Davis, Donna Deegan, Al Ferraro, Audrey Gibson and Frank Keasler. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on October 5, 2023 at 4:43 pm
With the mayor’s signature on the 2023 budget, it’s a good time to reflect on how we got to the political dynamic that underlies the current body politic.
In Jacksonville’s recent local elections, there is no doubt that it was the nastiest – and most expensive – election cycle in our city’s history. Like most of us, I believe many of the campaign advertisements were over the top, weren’t healthy for our city and wore thin on the voters.
Politics is a contact sport; this we can be sure of. But doesn’t it matter who throws the first punch? If you are a candidate for office, running with every intention to have a “clean” race on the issues but your opponent swings at you first, don’t they force your hand and prompt a response? Of course, the answer is almost always yes.
With the benefit of hindsight, let’s dig in and see which campaigns chose to sling mud at their opponents first. These are the candidates who lit the match for the scorched-earth election cycle that appalled so many of us.
Mayor
Who swung first? Not Daniel Davis, the eventual 2nd place finisher to Mayor Donna Deegan, but former San Marco Council member LeAnna Cumber.
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Only weeks after Davis entered the mayor’s race, Cumber and her political committee JAX First opted to go negative – running digital and direct mail advertisements calling Davis a “liberal” and “tax-raiser” who “you can’t trust” and who “wants more of your hard-earned money.” Cumber, a Republican like Davis, followed that up with a radio ad in November attacking both Davis and Deegan as “tax raisers” with “scary ideas” like “giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants.”
It is no wonder the complaints from Cumber’s team about Davis’ attacks months later rang so hollow.
Jacksonville sheriff election, 2022
If you were a casual observer of Jacksonville politics or got most of your information from liberal pundits and columnists (or Twitter), you would assume that T.K. Waters’ campaign probably swung first in last year’s sheriff’s race against Lakesha Burton. Not true.
While Republican Waters was cruising to a first-place finish in the August election, Burton initially struggled to break away from a crowded field of Democrat candidates – that is until she, of course, opted to go negative.
Burton’s political committee, Make Every Voice Count, aired television ads dinging fellow Democrat Ken Jefferson for “never [being] trusted with leadership responsibilities” and “a great TV personality without the experience needed to lead” – ironic, considering Burton’s brief stint in TV news after losing the election before she joined the Deegan administration.
City Council District 11
Both Republican Raul Arias (the eventual winner) and Democrat Ramon Day ran clean races in the runoff election to replace termed-out City Council Member Danny Becton in May.
The March election has been a different story. Third place candidate, Republican Norman Brewer, howled insistently online and in person about attacks from the Arias campaign. This even prompted Brewer to leave the local Republican Party and cross party lines to endorse the Democrat. The irony here is, of course, that Brewer attacked Arias first.
In early February, Brewer’s political committee, Citizens for Clean Government, sent out a negative mailer accusing Arias of not paying his taxes and receiving traffic tickets.
The Arias campaign answered swiftly and persistently with its own hits on Brewer, and it wound up being the Brewer campaign’s undoing. Brewer certainly bit off more than he could chew.
Do as I say, not as I do?
Politics can be messy, and local races are not immune to that. Campaigns will trade barbs, and it is up to the voter to do their own research to make educated choices for their leaders. I would be wary, however, of any candidate who complains of being a victim of “mudslinging” or “scorched earth” campaigning – because it seems that most of the time, they play in the mud just as much as the rest of them.
