Published on August 7, 2023 at 5:06 pm
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Elections have consequences. And certain Jacksonville Republicans are finding out what those are.
Mayor Donna Deegan made some moves last week that showed a dramatic break between her administration and the one that preceded it.
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For starters, Deegan’s administration cut ties with Ballard Partners, the GOP-heavy lobbying powerhouse that employs former Mayor Lenny Curry and his former chief of staff, Jordan Elsbury.
The email came late in the day on July 31, terminating a contract that had reaped the firm more than $1.2 million since 2020 for federal and state lobbying work, per records provided by the mayor’s office. The communique caught Ballard by surprise, as the firm had been meeting with the Deegan administration up until the day they got the ax, in what city spokesman Phil Perry called a “collective team decision.”
There are those who blame Chief Administrative Officer Karen Bowling for the move; Perry denies that framing. He says it’s a matter of the administration’s seeking to “get more federal grants,” a priority of the Deegan team on the campaign trail.
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Ballard may not have been as connected to the Joe Biden White House as some wanted, but with Republican senators and representatives in the region, one theory was they were protected on the legislative side. For now, it appears that Southern Group, which employs Deegan campaign fundraiser Stephanie Cardozo, could see more state work. Some are saying that Shumaker Advisors, with former Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, could be positioned to get the federal contract also.
The Ballard kiss-off wasn’t the only move the Deegan administration made against the formerly entrenched political machine.
In a massive shakeup of the Kids Hope Alliance board, she also replaced five members last week. Among them: former City Council candidate Rose Conry, who was a client of Tim Baker’s when she ran back in 2019, and Rebekah Davis, the wife of Daniel Davis, who lost the race for mayor to Deegan despite his campaign full of character assassination against the eventual winner.
Board purges are nothing new. Those with some historical perspective will recall the Curry administration also removed people from boards, especially the JEA Board and the Planning Commission. In the words of Michael Scott on The Office, “Oh, how the turns table.”
But when it comes to the City Council, some of Deegan’s moves might run into a roadblock — take the nomination of her favored pick, former mayoral candidate Al Ferraro, to head the Neighborhoods Department, which appears on the brink of rejection, thanks to old guard Council members who supported Davis.
“Relationships matter,” one member said, calling this a “relationship business.”
Some members of Council aren’t in any rush to meet with Ferraro, for whom a waiver would be required because he lacks the requisite college degree and management experience to run the department.
Ferraro did chair Transportation, Energy, and Utilities Committee a couple of times, but he was kept off of Rules and Finance, the most powerful committees on the Council.
There are those who say that even inside the mayor’s office, some wonder if the juice is worth the squeeze. Investing political capital in a doomed nominee comes at the cost of other priorities, and beyond Ferraro’s “passion for neighborhoods,” there is little to recommend him.
Ferraro’s nomination, and how it has been handled, could be the first of many confrontations between the new administration and the City Council. It’s a matter to watch, not only for 2023 but ahead of the next mayoral election in 2027.
