Jacksonville's mayor-elect Alvin Brown

“What’s past is prologue,” wrote William Shakespeare.

As Mayor-elect Alvin Brown assembles his transition team, we thought it would be instructive to learn more about the man who will lead the city of Jacksonville over the course of the next four years.

Everybody knows part of Brown’s personal story, encapsulated in his catchy campaign slogan — “From Winn-Dixie to the White House” — but even his most ardent supporters would be hard-pressed to tell you much else about the person entrusted with guiding the River City in what will almost certainly be some rocky periods ahead, particularly given Jacksonville’s continuing recession-ravaged economy and the city’s looming fiscal crisis.

Two weeks after his stunning victory on May 17, the 47-year-old Brown remains something of a mystery to most citizens of Jacksonville.

Part of that is due to his low-key nature, his natural aversion to appearing too boastful about his own accomplishments — he rarely mentioned his role as executive director of the Bush/Clinton Katrina Fund’s Interfaith Fund during the campaign, for example — and part is undoubtedly due to an unwillingness to subject himself to any media scrutiny.

That appeared to be the case early in the mayoral campaign when he failed to return a phone call requesting an interview from the Jacksonville Observer — his wife clearly kept the candidate at an arm’s distance — or when he displayed a similar reluctance to return phone calls from the Times-Union and other media outlets.

If Jacksonville’s newly-elected mayor has developed a reputation for secrecy — as some of his critics charge — much of it is a result of his own actions and unwillingness to be more forthcoming.

Perhaps he became too accustomed to working in a huge federal bureaucracy, far from the media glare, to ever really warm up to reporters.

Meet Your New Mayor

While the voters of Duval County didn’t have an opportunity to learn a whole lot about Brown’s past during the recent campaign, his personal campaign contributions can tell us a lot about his political instincts, for better or worse.

The former senior member of the Clinton Administration, it turns out, has been extremely generous in giving to candidates for federal office, donating nearly $50,000 to candidates — almost all of them Democrats, including quite a few members of the Black Caucus — during the past sixteen years, dating back to his ill-fated primary challenge to U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown in 1994. That’s pretty impressive.

A couple of those contributions speak volumes, however, about Brown’s judgment — or lack thereof — and his ability to read people.

Maybe he’s just a trusting soul.

"Dollar Bill" Jefferson

In 1995, for example, Brown contributed to the now-disgraced William J. Jefferson, the Louisiana congressman who was later convicted and sentenced to 13 years in prison on bribery and money laundering charges while serving in Congress.

Congressman William Jefferson's freezer held more than pie crusts.

It’s unclear what Brown’s relationship with Jefferson — who stuffed $90,000 in marked money in the freezer of his Virginia home and later refused to cooperate with federal investigators — was at the time.

Brown, with no seeming connections to politics in “The Big Easy,” nevertheless contributed $500 to Jefferson’s re-election campaign during the 1995-96 election cycle, despite the fact that “Dollar Bill” — a nickname derisively hung on him by late New Orleans Mayor Dutch Morial — faced no opposition.

Meek and McKinney

Jacksonville’s next mayor also contributed a similar amount that year to Cynthia McKinney, the combative and controversial six-term Atlanta congresswoman who made headlines in September 2008 when — as the Green Party’s candidate for President — she accused the Department of Defense of systematically disposing of 5,000 bodies, each with a single bullet wound to the head, in the Louisiana swamps in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Brown’s one-time ally — somebody he was at least willing to part with money for — told the press that most of the victims were prisoners.

In addition to giving generously to Corrine Brown — the same woman who once called him a “carpetbagger” — Jacksonville’s newly-minted mayor also opened his wallet for U.S. Rep. Carrie Meek (D-Fl.) in 1996. He gave her $500, too.

An Escalade, provided to Carrie Meek by Dennis Stackhouse, is parked at his Opa-Locka building, where her foundation had a rent-free office. (Chuck Fadely/Miami Herald)

Meek, the first African-American elected to Congress from Florida since Reconstruction, was another gem.

As recently as last year, the Committee for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) cited the former congresswoman for accepting $90,000 in “consulting fees” and the free use of a Cadillac Escalade from a developer for whom her son — who, incidentally, conveniently inherited her congressional seat eight years earlier — had earmarked some $1,072,750 in taxpayer funds for a development project. The developer also reportedly gave the former congresswoman the free use of a 2,600-square foot office for her foundation.

CREW’s executive director Melanie Sloan, a no-nonsense former assistant U.S. Attorney, also brought up the questionable circumstances surrounding Meek’s role in her son’s initial election to Congress in 2002, when the 76-year-old congresswoman waited until shortly before the filing deadline to announce her retirement, putting other Democrats in the district at a distinct disadvantage while “essentially bequeathing” the seat to her son.

She was apparently Alvin Brown’s kind of candidate, too.

The Future First Lady and "Cash and Carry Larry"

Santhea Hicks, the future mayor’s wife, has also made a number of contributions, including a $1,000 donation to New York City Councilman Larry Seabrook, a longtime Bronx politician, who was indicted last year on a laundry list of corruption charges, including 13-counts of money laundering, fraud and extortion.

Hicks, who was then working at the U.S. Department of Transportation, made the contribution eleven years ago when Seabrook — long known as “Cash and Carry Larry” — was waging a particularly nasty campaign for Congress against U.S. Representative Eliot L. Engel.

Like her husband, Hicks — who listed her occupation as the executive director of the Willie Gary Football Classic — also made the maximum individual contributions of $2,300 to the presidential campaigns of both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008.

A Tight Bond

These are just some of the candidates that Alvin Brown and his wife have lavished with campaign contributions over the past sixteen years.

Brown’s most curious contribution, however, occurred in 2004 when he wrote out a check for $2,000 to Republican Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri. Bond appears to be the only Republican that Brown ever gave money to. The former Clinton aide, who had worked closely with the Missouri lawmaker on housing issues while he was at HUD, helped Bond raise money that year, including hosting a low-key fundraising event for him at the River Club here in Jacksonville.

That’s somewhat surprising since the four-term legislator had one of the lowest civil rights scores in the Senate, receiving a dismal 11 percent rating on affirmative action from the NAACP in 2005-2006 — a time-honored organization, incidentally, that our mayor-elect unsuccessfully sought to head a few years later.  As one of three finalists, Brown lost out to current President Benjamin Todd Jealous.

Jerry Holland, Duval County Supervisor of Elections

A Week After The Election, Philadelphia Republicans are Still Waiting for Results

“It’s not the voting that’s democracy,” wrote celebrated British playwright Tom Stoppard, “it’s the counting.”

Long known for his literary acrobatics, Stoppard’s off-angle yet astoundingly astute observation was never truer than this past Tuesday when voters in two of America’s major cities went to the polls to nominate and elect candidates for mayor.

Unlike Jacksonville, voters who participated in last Tuesday’s primary election in Philadelphia, the nation’s birthplace, are still waiting to find out who their Republican nominee for mayor will be.

While the Democrats, who outnumber Republicans in the City of Brotherly Love by a more than 6 ½-to-1 margin, easily re-nominated Mayor Michael A. Nutter, who faced only token opposition in his primary, the two GOP candidates for mayor are nervously awaiting the official outcome almost a week after the last vote was cast.

The fact that the tired and declining Philadelphia GOP is a party at war with itself has only added to the protracted suspense.

Karen Brown, a former Catholic schoolteacher and Democratic precinct committeewoman before being asked to run for mayor on the Republican ticket, clings to a narrow 57-vote lead over challenger John Featherman, a Center City realtor and former local TV correspondent whose rebel candidacy, fueled by a posse of angry young idealists and newcomers, took aim at the city’s entrenched GOP leadership.

Featherman and his supporters contend that the party’s leaders are nothing but lapdogs for the city’s powerful Democratic organization, deliberately running weak candidates in exchange for patronage jobs, usually in the ticket-happy and dreaded Philadelphia Parking Authority.

It was probably no coincidence, they claim, that the nominating petitions for Featherman’s opponent were circulated by thirty employees of that agency.

In any case, the race between Featherman and Brown was extremely close all night long — at one point they were literally tied at 8,084 votes apiece — and it still is.

Incredibly, it took until late Friday — nearly 72 hours after the polls closed — to complete the counting of the votes cast on Tuesday from the city’s 1,687 precincts, giving Brown her narrow lead over the insurgent Featherman in what many viewed as a fight for the soul of the Republican Party.

But they’ll have to wait a little longer.

City officials now say that it won’t be until some time later this week before the officials results are known. They still have to tabulate an undetermined number of Republican ballots in the estimated 1,675 absentee and provisional ballots that remain to be counted.

The reasons for the delay are numerous. On Wednesday afternoon there were some 65 cartridges used in voting machines in polling places across the city that still hadn’t been delivered to the office of the City Commissioners, as preposterous as that might seem.

By Thursday, 17 precincts still remained to be counted.

That was 48 hours after the election.

Marge Tartaglione

Moreover, Marge Tartaglione, the crusty and combative 78-year-old great-grandmother who’s been in charge of the Philadelphia election machinery for the past thirty years or so, suffered a stunning rebuke at the polls last Tuesday and apparently has been in no hurry to count the remaining votes.

She lost, that’s all she seemingly cared about.

In the meantime, the waiting continues.

Unofficially, only 12.9 percent, or fewer than 17,000 of the city’s Republican voters turned out for the election, but nearly a week after the polls closed, nobody yet knows who actually won the GOP mayoral primary.

While Tartaglione and Philadelphia’s two other city commissioners — those who administer that city’s elections — appear to have taken the late Eugene McCarthy’s adage to heart when he said that “an efficient bureaucracy is the greatest threat to liberty,” the long delay in counting all of the votes borders on the edge of the ridiculous, if not completely over the edge.

McCarthy’s witty insightfulness notwithstanding, there are certain things one would hope the government can do efficiently.

Counting votes is one of them.

That’s something Duval County Supervisor of Elections Jerry Holland clearly understands.

Contrast what happened in Philadelphia, for instance, to the lightning-quick speed in which Holland and his relatively small staff tabulated and reported the returns in Jacksonville’s razor-thin and hotly-contested mayoral race last Tuesday.

Alvin Brown and Mike Hogan didn’t have to wait long to learn their fate, nor did the more than 193,000 voters who took the time to cast a ballot in last week’s city elections.

Both men had poured their hearts and souls into the campaign, a contest with huge ramifications for Jacksonville’s future, and both of them deserved a quick and accurate verdict.

So did the voters.

Holland, a public servant who takes his responsibilities seriously, made it happen.

Unlike Philadelphia’s Marge Tartaglione, whose sad political remains were relegated to the dustbin of history on Tuesday and who has rarely been seen since, the mild-manned Holland immediately stepped up, reassuring an anxious public that his staff would begin counting the remaining 1,900 or more absentee and provisional ballots still outstanding as quickly as humanly possible, a process that began just after daybreak on Wednesday.

With only 603 votes separating Brown and Hogan — a lead amassed by the little-known and largely untested Democrat only after the final four precincts reported late Tuesday night — an anxious city waited.

Alvin Brown’s election night assertion of making sure “every vote is counted,” a momentary flashback to the controversially bitter 2000 presidential election — and a point stressed by the Democratic candidate no fewer than five times during his awkwardly-delivered two-minute speech at the Jacksonville Landing — was hardly necessary.

Holland, who was determined to complete the task as swiftly and accurately as possible, had no intention of doing anything less.

The day-long count on Wednesday gave the victorious Brown, the city’s first African-American mayor, an insurmountable lead of more than 1,300 votes, and by 7 p.m. that evening, Republican Mike Hogan, the Duval County tax collector, graciously conceded to his Democratic opponent.

Nobody questioned the legitimacy of the results, or the margin of Brown’s historic victory.

Thanks to the swift actions by Holland and his staff, Jacksonville knew with certainty — and in a timely fashion — who its next mayor will be.

Voters in Philadelphia still don’t even know who one of their mayoral candidates will be.

We should count our blessings.

Guest editorial by Diane Melendez

While on Facebook a few days back, the live messaging box popped up on my computer screen, it was Austin Cassidy. I clicked on the link and saw the short query he had sent to me. It made me smile. "Diane, you and I don't always agree about politics, but I just saw the message you posted on Lenny Curry's facebook page," he wrote. "I was wondering if you would write a small piece for the Jacksonville Observer?"

My answer was that it would be a pleasure to share my thoughts about Mr. Hogan.

Here is what I wrote on Lenny's page: I am supporting Mike Hogan as is my entire family because he is the best choice for Jacksonville at this difficult juncture in our history. He has the experience and understanding to get us past the current financial mess and build a strong foundation for the city to grow on. In my heart of hearts I know Mike is the best qualified most experienced candidate.

Diane Melendez, a lifelong, card carrying Democrat who registered at the age of 18 and has voted Democrat for 4 decades will be voting for Republican Mike Hogan in the unitary election in May. My reasons are simple and straight forward. Mike Hogan understands the serious economic crisis our city, state and country is now facing. He is experienced and qualified. He has taken a hard and realistic look at the state of our local economy and understands that Jacksonville does not have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem. His assessment is spot on.

Now is not the time to grow government. Nor is it the time for the wild and grand visionings of candidate Alvin Brown, a man who is painfully underqualified for the office of Mayor. Brown comes to the voters with no real understanding of how our local government functions. He instead offers superficial soudbites and energetic buzz phrases. He is the product of a bloated Federal HUD program under former President Bill Clinton nearly a decade and a half ago. That has been his entire claim to fame for most of his campaign. The overworked rhetoric and Clinton/Gore name dropping he began with has overtime expanded to include soundbites from other candidates platforms. He now drops the names of Audrey Moran and Peter Rummell while unabashedly adopting Moran's grow the government platform to include another DDA, an education Czar and imagined downtown all on the taxpayers dime. Jacksonville simply cannot accept the rhetoric and empty promises of Alvin Brown in place of the real experience, qualifications and sound plan to cut our spending that Mike Hogan brings to the table.

I will be voting Mike Hogan for Mayor of Jacksonville and I hope that everyone who reads this will do the same...

“Mike Hogan is a common sense conservative with a detailed plan to cut wasteful spending and strengthen Jacksonville’s economy,” said Bush. “Mike stood with me in Tallahassee to cut taxes and fight for real education reform. He was a leader in finding conservative solutions to the challenges Florida faced, and I know Mike will do what’s right for the people of Jacksonville.”

“I respected Jeb’s leadership as Governor tremendously, and I am humbled by his endorsement,” said Hogan, who served in the Florida Legislature from 2000 to 2003. “No one understands Jacksonville’s importance to our entire state more than Governor Bush and I am grateful to him for his support.”

Well, that was fun.

Back about six months or so ago, I announced that I had chosen so seek a seat on the Jacksonville City Council.  And I chose an enormous mountain to climb in the process… challenging a well-known incumbent in a county-wide race.

We now know how that turned out.  John Crescimbeni will serve another four years on the City Council as the Group 2 representative.  Not the outcome we were hoping for, but in this game, second place is really no different than last if the top finisher goes over that 50 percent threshold.  Say nothing about coming in third.

But it was an experience that I would not have missed for anything in the world. The positives outweigh the negatives by orders of magnitude.

What did I learn from my first foray into politics? Well, first of all, it’s a BIG county. Running a city-wide race from essentially a grass-roots level is a monumental undertaking, particularly when you have deadline work on your desk every day of the campaign. I was fond of saying on the campaign trail that it was a lot like running a mayor’s race without the big budget. And with three Republicans in the contest, resources were spread pretty thin. The Democrat incumbent did not have to compete among his party faithful for donations, and there was no one waiting on the sidelines to see who came out of the first election to make the runoff.

Speaking of runoffs, I didn’t talk to anyone, other than the incumbent, who wasn’t absolutely certain there would be one. The math for it makes sense in a four person race, but in this case, the conventional wisdom was … let’s face it … wrong.

When I’ve been asked what surprised me the most about running for office, I’d have to say it’s the lack of knowledge by the electorate about how our city government works. The question I was asked most often while campaigning was “what does ‘At-Large’ mean?” Other candidates told me the same thing. People really don’t understand how their city council is structured, or what it is that the council does. They get the concept of the district councilperson, but when it comes to the county-wide seats, not so much.

I learned that there are a lot of people out there who think like I do, and who have a vision for where they want the city to go. The business and community leaders with whom I met almost to a person see a great deal of opportunity here, with the right leadership. Many of them thought I would have been an asset in that regard, and that is a very humbling feeling.  Almost as humbling as the idea that about sixteen percent of those who voted said I was their top choice.  Again, no trophy for second place.

I met some really great people along the way, some of whom I hope will be friends for a long time.  Then there were those who made you want to wash your hands or take a shower every time you were in the same room with them.  I learned that people will say or do just about anything to win a city council race, which was not a direction I wanted to go.

I was also stunned by the apathy on the part of the nearly 70 percent of the registered voters who chose not to become informed and take part in this election.  But then, I’ve long been an advocate of being informed and voting. I said often on the campaign trail that the government closest to you is the one which can have the most direct effect on your quality of life, and here, that’s the Jacksonville city government… unless you live in one of the beaches communities or Baldwin.

I’m also glad that back when I was a kid, we were allowed to lose.  In real life, we keep score, and while no one wants to feel the disappointing sting of losing, it’s something for which everyone should be prepared.

So, it was go big or go home… and in this first campaign, I’m home.  I’m also now often asked what else I might consider, if having had a taste of life in the political spotlight if I will seek it again.  I won’t say no… because like so many things, it’s a promise that I can’t guarantee that I’d be able to keep.  But I did not seek the office to be a bigshot.  I ran because I felt like I could make a difference in moving Jacksonville forward.  To those who supported me, with their time, talents, treasure, and votes I offer a most sincere and humble “thank you.”   Seeking political office is not for everybody, particularly not the faint of heart, but I feel I’m a better person for having done so.  It was an experience I’ll never forget.

Who benefits in a low turnout situation?

The Dixie Strategies-Jacksonville Observer poll of city races suggests Mike Hogan and Rick Mullaney could benefit from the limited voter interest. With Audrey Moran relying on Democrats and moderates for much of her support, two groups that are far less reliable voters. Plus, the lower the turnout tomorrow, the more important absentees will be in determining a winner.

"Republicans have always been better at turning out absentee votes," says Brian Graham of Dixie Strategies.

"People who consider themselves conservatives tend toward Mullaney and Hogan, and those are the voters who tend to show up in a low turnout election. Audrey's support could be weaker, as moderate voters are less excitable," concludes Graham. "Those same facts would give Hogan an advantage in a run-off election against Moran."

The following are the full, final breakdowns from the poll conducted by Dixie Strategies...

- Broken down by party

- Broken down by gender

- Broken down by political orientation

Click here to see initial numbers from the Mayoral, Tax Collector and City Council races.

In addition to those contests, we also polled the race for Sheriff and Property Appraiser.

THE SHERIFF'S RACE...

Incumbent John Rutherford looks very strong in his bid for a third term in office. Rutherford gets the support of nearly 81% of Republicans and 60% of overall voters.

Rutherford more than doubles-up on the support of Democrat Ken Jefferson, who is polling at 29%. Independent Soren Brockdorf, who has done little campaigning, has 4.5% in our survey.

Only 6% are undecided in this race, in line with the mayoral contest.

PROPERTY APPRAISER...

Jim Overton is also a lock for re-election as Property Appraiser. The Republican incumbent outpolls his Democratic challenger by 56% to 29% in the Dixie Strategies-Jacksonville Observer poll.

Around 14% of voters have yet to make up their minds.

MORE DETAILED RESULTS...

For more complete results in all races, broken down by candidates and party registration, click here. We will be releasing the rest of the data provided by Dixie Strategies on Monday, including breakdowns by gender and intensity of political orientation.

NOTE TO MEDIA OUTLETS: Feel free to share and report any numbers from this survey, but it must be referred to as the "Dixie Strategies-Jacksonville Observer Poll" in all coverage.

Lumb is a fiscal conservative and a small business owner with an extremely impressive understanding of the issues important to Jacksonville voters.   He promises to apply strict budget discipline with spending priorities that focus on essential services and basic needs like police, fire, roads, parks and libraries.   The next four years will offer the council many challenges, particularly when it comes to pension reform. Lumb has pledged to make meaningful changes to the city’s pension system that will reduce costs and ensure solvency.

Lumb earned a 100% rating from the Concerned Taxpayers of Duval County and currently serves as the Vice-Chairman of the Duval County Republican Party.

With so many candidates in the mix, it will be almost impossible for any one to win the 50% needed to avoid a May run-off.

The other leading candidates in this race are Republicans Sean Hall and Michelle Tappouni.

Hall has ties to the Peyton administration, and we mean that literally.  His wife is Kerri Stewart, the mayor's Chief Administrative Officer.

Tappouni has shown great energy in her first bid for office and enjoys the support of the Realtors, Builders and Firefighters.  In fact, we believe that an ideal run-off would feature both Lumb and Tappouni.

Republican Robin Rukab touts the endorsement of former mayor Jake Godbold.  That fact alone should give you serious pause about her candidacy.

Conservative Republican Fred Engness is also running, but has failed to raise a significant amount of money to support his bid.

Donald Foy, the head of MADDADS, is the wild card in the race.  He's running with No Party Affiliation.

The Florida Times-Union, in a rare moment of clarity, actually got this race right when they endorsed Lumb.  Stating: "A lot of candidates spout cliches and speak in generalities. It's rare to see anyone put so much thought into policy issues."

We agree and are proud to endorse Robin Lumb as the superior choice for City Council, Group 5.

For a sample of Robin's writing, check out the archive of opinion columns he has contributed to the Jacksonville Observer over the past year.

This time around, things have shifted. Crescimbeni's re-election prospects seem quite dim as a Democrat in a decidedly Republican-leaning climate.

Three Republicans are aiming to take on the incumbent, and it's likely that we'll see a May run-off between one of these challengers and Democrat Crescimbeni.

Republican Tom Patton is a former television and radio host who, for about a year prior to launching his campaign for city council, hosted a weekly radio program for the Jacksonville Observer on conservative talk station WBOB.  Naturally, we're a little biased. 

We believe that Patton offers voters a competant and fiscally conservative option.  His knowledge and passion for Jacksonville's future come through loud and clear whenever he speaks to an audience.  He has been co-endorsed by the Jacksonville Chamber, and is backed by former Mayor John Delaney and several other high profile Republican officeholders.

Patton talks often about a shift to the practice of "zero-based" budgeting, which would force entities to provide real justification for their budgetary requests rather than starting with last year's budget and adding on a few percent for growth.  It's a practice that the city must begin to employ if we ever hope to get control of spending, and one that Patton acknowledges will lead to some difficult decisions.   

"Everything will have to be on the table," Patton said recently when answering a question about budget cuts that might eliminate some agencies like the Human Rights Commission.

Neither of the other Republicans, businessmen Paul Martinez and Vince Serrano, offer voters a particularly attractive alternative.

Martinez speaks often about social and national issues, boasting the endorsement of State Senator John Thrasher as well as the co-endorsement of the Jacksonville Chamber.  Strangely, Martinez decided to switch his party registration from Republican to Democrat shortly after Barack Obama took office in early 2009.  About a year later, and just a couple of months before getting into this city council race, Martinez switched back to being a Republican.  The party switching is particularly amusing when you consider some of the sharply negative things Thrasher had to say about his own Democrat-turned-Republican primary challenger, Charles Perniciaro, during the last election cycle.

Beyond the issue of party registration, Martinez seems to lack depth.  He speaks primarily in soundbites about cutting government waste and always mentions how pro-life he is.  It would be better if he focused on relevant local issues like pension reform or growing and expanding the port.

Martinez also has a rather mixed voting history, though not quite as bad as Vince Serrano.  According to the Supervisor of Elections office, Martinez didn't vote in last round of city elections during 2007 and also seems to skip most primary elections, including the 2008 presidential primary. 

Serrano's voting record is hard to figure out.  He hasn't voted in a regular municipal election since 1991.  However, despite being a "native of Jacksonville" it appears that Serrano actually lived in Clay County during most of the last two decades, which would explain why he didn't vote in those elections.  Stranger still, despite talking up a good game about the Tea Party movement, Serrano did not even vote in the 2010 primary or general elections.  Would he have supported Rick Scott and Marco Rubio?  Who knows.  His sudden interest in serving on the city council is confusing, though he does seem to make a point of telling people that he's not doing it for the money at most of the campaign forums we've seen him speak at.  Sometimes we wonder.

The Jacksonville Observer strongly endorses Tom Patton in the At-Large, Group 2 race.  Voters looking for a consistent, thoughtful and engaged representative on the city council will be well served if he is elected.