OPINION | The final stretch: Pre-primary election thoughts

It’s all over Tuesday night.

The interminable alternations of virtue signaling and character assassination from politicians.

The strategically leaked internal polls that are as fake and pumped-up as the U.S. dollar.

The television ads, the spicy anonymous text messages, the glossy mail pieces.

We are about to see who is swimming naked when the tide goes out, to paraphrase Warren Buffett.

Here are some of the major things to watch as results come in Tuesday night.

Were they inevitable?

Credible polling says that Republican Byron Donalds and Democrat David Jolly will advance with ease to the general governor election, but so much rests on how much protest vote there is against them. 

In other words, what does success look like for the likely Republican and Democratic nominees in the governor’s race?

Donalds needs to be closer to 60% than to 50%, frankly. He’s been polling around that lower number for months as Republican opponents, such as Paul Renner and Jay Collins, have argued that the number of undecided voters gives them a path.

While that likely isn’t true given Donalds’ resource and visibility advantage, it’s also not optimal to go into a general election without having consolidated the party, especially after a season where his opponents attacked his character as much as his policy positions.

Meanwhile, Jolly – a former Republican congressman who washed out when Trump rose up and then switched parties – needs to be close to 90%. Opponents like Dayna Foster and state Rep. Dotie Joseph got no real traction and hearing beyond meetings of party diehards, so the more vote share they get, the more work Jolly has to do to bring their supporters aboard so they aren’t November undervotes.

White dudes

Here’s a corollary to the above. It feels like the Florida Democratic Party has made a concentrated bet on white swing voters on the I-4 corridor. Lt. Col. Alex Vindman, a candidate for U.S. Senate, actually said as much during a visit to St. Johns County. While the party didn’t officially endorse in the Senate primary, opponent Angie Nixon, a Jacksonville House representative, says party leadership was walking Vindman around, which the party denies. And then of course there was Rachel Vindman, who rapped Nixon for not dressing professionally. 

Assuming Vindman wins – and that’s a big if given that he’s a newcomer to the state and at least some voters will care about that – how do he and the party reach out to Black women, the core of the Democratic coalition? If Democrats are to have any shot in November, Vindman particularly will have to figure out the politics of this state. Otherwise, he will be a drag on the ticket, including in the governor’s race.

Lucky 13?

I keep hearing about Audrey Gibson’s appearance on First Coast Connect last week, and the reviews are not good for the former Senate Democratic Leader seeking to replace Angie Nixon in the House.

People took issue particularly with what they thought was a demonstrated lack of understanding of the LGBTQ+ community’s concerns, with Gibson saying she wasn’t aware of the history of incendiary comments about them made by supportive Rep. Kim Daniels, D-Jacksonville.

Incidentally, former Daniels opponent Leslie Jean-Bart, a local lawyer, is Gibson’s opponent. 

Time will tell if Gibson’s late-campaign interview flub matters. Both candidates raised around $30,000 at this writing, and mail pieces and text messages have been few and far between even deep into the early voting period.

Gibson made news by criticizing Mayor Deegan’s administration also, saying that CFO Anna Brosche made each day for her a “little bit of Hell” by way of explaining her departure from the administration after less than a year.

Deegan doesn’t plan to endorse in this race, and Gibson is lucky that’s the case. While Deegan may have lost some support among Republicans, House District 13 is a closed primary, so only Democrats get to vote in an election that likely decides it all.

Voting violence

It would not be election season without a problem at a polling place, and Northeast Florida has a long, not-so-proud history of confrontations between candidates, operatives and malcontents.

This cycle, the brawl to settle it all – or not – was in St. Johns County, where Diana Jordan-Baldwin was attacked at World Golf Village, an unlikely scene for such, but so it goes.

Her campaign claims that she was “punched in the face,” that “her husband was also struck, and Diana was later pushed to the ground during the confrontation.”

Rep. Kim Kendall, her opponent in the House District 18 race, condemned the incident.

Speaking of Kendall, some local Republicans may not be investing much into her opponent’s campaign, but they want her gone. 

Among them: Katie Wiles, the daughter of Susie Wiles, the current White House Chief of Staff and former Lenny Curry top administrator, and who is a formidable political force in her own right. Kendall supported Senate Bill 686, which fast-tracks the development of farmland, an issue that has changed St. Johns County permanently already.

While Kendall says she wishes she hadn’t voted for the bill, the damage has been done. 

“I’m going to make her life hell for as long as I possibly can,” Wiles tells this column.

Barr none

Speaking of Republican-on-Republican violence, many of this column’s sources in the GOP are seething about the lack of get-out-the-vote efforts under Republican Party of Duval County Chair Scooter Barr as we head toward a City Council special election that could see Democrat Mone Holder flip Terrance Freeman’s seat if she can win outright Tuesday.

“How can we win in a D+10 environment,” fumed one highly placed party official last week amid disappointing early voting. 

Another operative and commentator passed on a picture of a “Republicans Vote Here” snipe sign in front of Jacksonville Beach City Hall, where there is no voting. 

Backers of Barr claim it’s just the Lenny Curry machine out to get him. 

Republicans don’t necessarily want the race to go to November, perhaps because they don’t know how Donalds does in the general election, much less whether he has coattails to carry retired Police Commander Deb Wesley, who is best known right now for residency challenges from Democrats aided and abetted by Libertarian spoiler Addison Patrick.

Odds are decent that Patrick peels off enough of the vote to force a run-off. Holder has raised upwards of $350,000 at this writing and has had ads on television. For once, Democrats have a resource lead in a Duval County race, a battle that many see as a harbinger of next year’s countywide elections.