BOARD GAMES

September 9, 2015
by
3 mins read

Last week, I got a scoop: JEA board member Peter Bower had sent an email to all the Northeast Florida Republican State Legislators during the session, which ripped that stout contingent a new one regarding their intransigence on Medicaid expansion.

“I find your performance on this session on behalf of the citizens of Florida to be despicable,” Bower started. “Do you represent anyone other than yourselves?”

“If you cannot represent all the citizens,” Bower continued, “not just special interest groups that serve your personal political and financial interests, then resign.”

Bower was appointed by Alvin Brown to the JEA board. Funny thing, though. Brown caught a case of Bower’s Remorse.

As past FW editor Jeff Billman wrote last February, Bower claimed that “Brown’s chief financial officer, Ronnie Belton, asked him before a JEA meeting last week to vote in favor of the mayor’s proposal … or else. Bower refused, then declined Belton’s alleged request to resign, then whined to the Times-Union about Brown’s “strong-arming.”

“I was told I should resign,” Bower said, according to the T-U. “I’m not going to be anybody’s puppet.”

Then, Bower told the paper, “I’m very disappointed in a few people. I think they’ve lost their moral compass, and I don’t think this is a good way to run a community.”

He then maxed out to the Bishop campaign.

The lesson? Political appointees are loyalists for a reason. While the idea of having a cadre of The City’s Best and Brightest in every position certainly seems logical to those on the outside, the fact is that we’re talking about Bower today not because of anything particularly special about his service on the JEA board, but because he has a habit of acting independently. In one case, against the interest of the man who appointed him. And in another case, stepping outside the parameters of his JEA board role to send a very political and partisan email.

And that is his right to do so. But keeping him around introduces a level of unnecessary risk.

In this context, I can see Lenny Curry’s removal of board members whose political priorities and proclivities do not jibe with those of his backers or with his. That’s the game. I’ve written a lot of Soandso Gets Bounced from Board stories in the last few weeks.

There was Ernest Isaac, who was bummed because his departure from the JEA board truncated what he thought was going to be his “last hurrah” in public life. There was Melody Bishop, who had to bid adieu to the Downtown Investment Authority; in her resignation letter, she pledged “support” to Lenny Curry, in a fulsome note from which maybe one or two City Hall types got a bit of schadenfreude. People didn’t raise hell about those two departures.

The one that got them? Ambassador Nancy Soderberg being asked to leave the JAXPORT board.

Curry has a singular vision for JAXPORT and the dredging project, and he apparently was happy and willing to take the chance that Nancy Soderberg, her peerless Democratic DC connex notwithstanding, would not be an asset to that. There apparently was a conversation in his office among Soderberg, appointments director Jordan Elsbury (whose job these days seems to consist of showing Brown-era holdovers the door) and the mayor.

“Pursuant to your conversation with Mr. Jordan Elsbury in my office,” Curry wrote, “please consider this letter a request for your immediate resignation.”

In her resignation letter, Soderberg described her tenure on the board as a “real honor” and a “sheer pleasure.”

Of course, what she’s saying outside public record is more interesting. She says moves like this are unprecedented. And a lot of the left-liberals who called Curry “Lyin’ Lenny” and assassinated his character in every possible way for a year before that election are now ticked off at the guy for being too political.

In unison, they ask: What about One City, One Jacksonville?

Well, what about it?

Curry’s City Hall is a much more diverse place, at least up top, than most, in May, expected it would be. Johnny Gaffney, Denise Lee, Sam Mousa, Mike Weinstein, Kerri Stewart — not a WASP male in the bunch. Two of them, meanwhile, know what the Duval Dems are all about from the inside.

And think of the political symbiosis between Curry and Bishop John Guns. Curry has made a point of reaching out to the African-American community in his first two months. I’ve seen it; I’ve covered it. It’s a good faith effort. It’s real. Hate on it if you want.

What’s also real: Nancy Soderberg came into prominence during the Clinton Administration, and those who know her know that she is going to help Hillary Clinton get elected in whatever ways she can be useful. That is her prerogative. Curry could have, theoretically, trusted her not to mix up her JAXPORT role with being Ready for Hillary. Or he could put someone in place about whom he doesn’t have to worry.

In a perfect world, where Duval Dems were the kind of party that could pull it together, they’d be able to avenge Curry disrespecting the ambassador. They’d start raising serious money to build up a challenger (Crescimbeni? Hazouri? Reggie Brown? Alvin Brown?) who would hit Curry with rhetorical brass knuckles on issue after issue for the next four years.

In this imperfect world? The party apparatus will sit back and take it, unable to see that Mayor Curry, since the election, has occupied the middle ground the party cleaves to like a drowning man to a life raft.

Folio is your guide to entertainment and culture around and near Jacksonville, Florida. We cover events, concerts, restaurants, theatre, sports, art, happenings, and all things about living and visiting Jax. Folio serves more than two million readers across Jacksonville and Northeast Florida, including St. Augustine, The Beaches, and Fernandina.

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