Jacksonville Jaguars President Mark Lamping addresses the Jacksonville City Council. | Will Brown, Jacksonville Today
Published on April 13, 2025 at 4:01 pm
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Jacksonville City Councilman Michael Boylan proposes changes to the process of Council leadership that won’t impact his cohort but which could change the way that presidents and vice presidents are selected in the coming decades.
As he wrote in The Florida Times-Union, Boylan wants to take away council’s prerogative to elect its own leaders and instead restrict leadership positions to the five at-large members of the council who are voted on by the entire city.
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Boylan, who represents Mandarin’s District 6, has tried and failed to get elected to helm the legislative body, which perhaps informs his view of what he calls an “appropriately maligned process by which we presently elect council leadership.”
Maligned by whom?
That question is not answered in his op-ed.
Boylan goes on to give his impression of a process that he hasn’t been able to master, painting those who have figured out how to get a “mere 10 votes” in nefarious ways.
“Oftentimes a member’s leadership vote is driven by self-interest in advancing their place on the council and political ambitions thereafter. The bill I will be offering eliminates such back-room negotiations,” he writes, about the same body that offers dozens of ex parte declarations of “back-room discussions” with lobbyists and advocates over all kinds of issues.
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The inherent contradictions in Boylan’s argument are paralleled by a willful historical myopia.
First, it’s worthwhile to review how council leadership races have gone in the past, including the most interesting race for president in the last decade: the battle between Anna Brosche and John Crescimbeni, two at-large members.
Democrat Crescimbeni was VP at the time, and that usually guarantees a glide path to the presidency. Republican Brosche upended the paradigm by memorably securing pledges from Black Democrats in Districts 7-10.
Quid pro quo? Sure was. Particularly when that group got control of the Finance Committee, setting up the most interesting budget hearings possible that August.
Brosche’s triumph upended a narrow clique on council, who, by and large, controlled the meaningful committees and the discourse. She outmaneuvered Crescimbeni. And she earned that victory.
Coalition building is key to the political process in Jacksonville, except for those rare candidates who raise so much money or have so much name identification that they clear the field.
Many races for council involve five candidates or more ahead of the March election, and the candidates are vetted in community forums and debates publicly and, more privately, by the donor class that gives the political operations oxygen.
It’s a gritty process, to be sure. But it’s infinitely more democratic than what we see for the state Legislature or Congress. And it reflects what people on the ground want.
Boylan also overrates the perspective of at-large council members over district representatives.
Randy White, Bill Gulliford, Lori Boyer, and others may have come from individual districts to lead the council. But they demonstrated a holistic understanding of citywide priorities during their times at the top. There was never a moment when the voters collectively gasped and said, ‘’My goodness, this issue can only be handled by an at-large representative.”
Jacksonville’s process is much more reflective of the present tense than how leaders are picked in the Florida House. A group of legislators soon after they are sworn in decides who will lead their caucus six years hence.
The winner of that battle enjoys the spoils.
And the loser? Well, sometimes he ends up like Daniel Davis, who couldn’t get to leadership and left the House early.
Much of the current local political discourse reflects an ironic frustration over powerlessness by people who nominally hold power. We see it in council’s belated buyers’ remorse over the confirmation of General Counsel Michael Fackler. And we see it in this proposal.
None of this drama has much to do with actual voters, of course.
If Boylan really wanted to democratize the council leadership process, there’s no reason the city Charter can’t be changed to put it up to a popular vote.
That would bring the politicking for the position out of the back room and into the ballot box. Yearly elections for that may be expensive. But can you really put a price on direct democracy?
(Don’t answer that.)
