FOLIO
Jacksonville City Councilman Bill Bishop’s mayoral campaign is obviously still underway, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone that his opponents are exercising due diligence.
Last month, for example, Tim Baker of Data Targeting requested records from the city of Jacksonville pertaining to “all contracts, payments, reimbursement or other monetary expenses paid by the City of Jacksonville or any of its subsidiaries or agents or contractors to Akel Logan Shafer Architects (ALSA) or Melody Bishop” — the councilman’s architect wife, who works at Akel Logan Shafer, where Bill is vice president and principal architect — including payments made to and contracts with Akel Logan Shaker, and contracts related to the “Northbank and Southbank River Walks,” the “Artists Walk” in Riverside, and the Tillie Fowler Memorial. Additionally, the records request sought “Communications from City Councilman Bill Bishop … related to ALSA proposals or contracts.”
Data Targeting, a GOP-aligned outfit with ties to the state party that Curry ran until last year, has already been digging in the crates for dirt on potential Republican mayoral candidates, as the deep dive into Mike Hogan’s work in city government last year revealed [The Flog, “What a GOP Firm’s Oppo Research Tells Us About the Jacksonville Mayor’s Race,” AG Gancarski, Dec. 13]. Then last week, Curry’s PAC circulated a mailer proclaiming “Bill Bishop Calls Himself a Conservative But Taxes Like a Liberal,” and highlighting a story in Folio Weekly that called him “by any measure, the most progressive candidate in the race” [Cover Story, “The Insurgent,” Susan Cooper Eastman, Jan. 14]. What is interesting here is, although Bishop, according to every public poll, is no threat to Curry, and on many issues there’s little daylight between Curry and Bishop, Curry and his allies aren’t shrugging him off.
Odds are, the targeted data will never be used. There’s a ton of it, and there’s probably little reason to devote finite resources to agitating against Bishop when it’s easier and more cost-effective to drop memes (such as reminding voters of Bishop’s role with the Herman Cain campaign, a state campaign co-chair position) and let the activists on the left promulgate them.
Jacksonville politics defies neat ideological categories. There’s plenty of evidence, and it was on display the weekend before last at Bishop’s Memorial Park rally in Riverside, an event that had representatives from Bishop’s coalition of supporters; speakers included Wayne Wood, Jesse Wilson, Jim Rinaman, the Rev. Juan Gray of the local Southern Christian Leadership Conference chapter — all backers of Mayor Alvin Brown’s 2011 campaign — and the candidate himself.
The speakers did their best to gin up enthusiasm among the crowd of dozens. Wood told them, “Everybody I talk to says ‘I’m going to vote for Bill, but I’m not sure he can win,'” and criticized the “corporate tycoons” backing Curry and Brown, who are spending “millions of dollars to chop each other into small pieces.”
Former Jax Chamber chair Rinaman attacked the Chamber’s political arm’s Curry endorsement as a rubber stamp that “endorses Republicans approved by the Republican Party hierarchy.” And Juan Gray? He said the First Coast Tea Party Hob Nobbers were more committed to democracy than the current mayor.
Brown took a lot of heat at the Bishop rally, but it pales in importance to the heat he took from JAXBIZ, which endorsed Curry in the strongest possible terms — leading the mayor’s campaign to claim that the JAXBIZ endorsement was contingent on a tax hike, something Curry and the Chamber folks denied with a “not just no, but hell no.” Who’s lying?
Here’s the truth: It doesn’t matter.
Brown’s problem isn’t the non-endorsement, but its framing as a repudiation by the moneyed class, which argues that the problems with the Brown administration’s budgets, the pension negotiations, and even social issues like the human rights ordinance can all be solved with a different man in City Hall. And they’re telling people that man should be Lenny Curry.
Democrats disagree, obviously. The subtext to their complaints boils down to “Alvin Brown has governed like a Republican, so why are the Republicans complaining?” Those on the other side, meanwhile, including the cash-money millionaires, say that Brown was an “accidental mayor” who had his shot and didn’t get it done.
For all of Brown’s attempts to govern as the golden mean, and for all of his photo-ops with Republicans, the mayor faces two existential challenges as the March election looms. The first: the Bishop campaign hitting him for a lack of ideological purity on social issues and peeling off progressive support. The second: the Curry camp undermining him with the donor class, behind closed doors, under the cover of confidentiality agreements. Even for an incumbent with a record of accomplishment, Brown faces a tough climb to a second term.
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