Mayor Deegan files for reelection, cites progress on public safety, affordability economic development<\/a><\/p>\nThe GOP is accusing the Deegan campaign of breaking Florida election laws in the launch of her campaign, an accusation a Deegan representative called a politically motivated \u201csmear campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n
The accusation stems from a campaign video posted on Thursday, the same day she filed for re-election. <\/p>\n
In a media release, the GOP said that hours after she filed, Deegan\u2019s campaign released a \u201cpolished, multi-minute video featuring staged footage of Deegan \u2014 including scenes filmed in her downtown office – along with testimonials, edited news clips, and multiple filming locations across Jacksonville.”<\/p>\n
\u201cThat kind of production doesn\u2019t happen in a few hours – and it doesn\u2019t happen for free,\u201d the Republican Party of Florida wrote.<\/p>\n
The Republican Party of Florida\u2019s complaint outlines alleged violations of Chapter 106, Florida Statutes, including accepting in-kind contributions, making expenditures, and\/or authorizing campaign expenditures prior to opening a campaign account and authorizing expenditures without sufficient funds on deposit in a campaign account. <\/p>\n
The Republican Party of Florida is requesting that the Florida Elections Commission initiate an investigation.<\/p>\n
Political campaign adviser Ashley Walker, who works for Deegan\u2019s campaign, said, \u201cEverything was done by the book and is a common practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing was filmed at City Hall,\u201d Walker wrote in a statement to News4JAX. \u201cWhile Mayor Deegan is delivering real results for Jacksonville families, they\u2019re distracting from that progress with partisan stunts and political distractions. We\u2019ve already seen these desperate, manufactured controversies and can only expect more of them as election season approaches. Mayor Deegan will keep getting things done for the people of Jacksonville. Politically motivated smear campaigns won\u2019t stop her.\u201d<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 The Republican Party of Florida on Friday announced that it is filing a formal complaint…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236160,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1039,116,118,117,99],"class_list":["post-236159","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-duval-county","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236159","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236159"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236159\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236159"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236159"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236159"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}