{"id":353208,"date":"2026-07-26T23:19:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T23:19:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/353208\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T23:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T23:19:10","slug":"big-money-backs-mone-holders-bid-to-flip-jax-city-council-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/353208\/","title":{"rendered":"Big money backs Mon\u00e9 Holder’s bid to flip Jax City Council seat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Democrats are in a super-minority on the Jacksonville City Council despite having the registration edge<\/a>\u00a0in Duval County, but it\u2019s clear donors believe that a Special Election to replace outgoing Republican Terrance Freeman<\/a> offers an opportunity to redress that imbalance.<\/p>\n

Mon\u00e9 Holder<\/a>, the chief advocacy and political officer at\u00a0Florida Rising<\/a>, is getting some help from Jacksonville Together,<\/a> a political committee advertising on the behalf of her campaign.<\/p>\n

The spot, which is airing on local television now, introduced viewers to Holder\u2019s biography, including her stint as Chair of the Jacksonville Planning Commission<\/a>, and said she would work to counteract the \u201cgood ol\u2019 boys\u201d on City Council.<\/p>\n

The committee is well-funded, mostly by a $200,000 loan from lawyer\u00a0Steve Pajcic.<\/p>\n

On Sunday afternoon, we called Holder, the number on record for the political committee, and Pajcic himself to get more information on the loan, which is generally a contrivance used by a candidate self-funding. We still await clarification of that bookkeeping decision.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Between the supportive political committee and nearly $35,000 in campaign account fundraising, Holder leads the three-woman field in the at-large City Council Special Election, which can be won on the August 18 Primary ballot if one candidate gets more than half of the vote.<\/p>\n

The stakes are high, especially in terms of the moral boost this could provide.<\/p>\n

Democrats control the Mayor\u2019s Office and the Property Appraiser\u2019s Office, but all five at-large seats are held by Republicans, who typically have better fundraising than their major-party opponents.<\/p>\n

The Florida Democratic Party is hoping to change that. It has included Holder on its list of Take Back Local<\/a>\u00a0candidates.<\/p>\n

The FDP says it has a good success rate, with Take Back Local candidates winning 76% of the time in the last four political cycles.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Republicans aren\u2019t ceding this race, of course.<\/p>\n

Jacksonville Sheriff\u2019s Office<\/a>\u00a0Commander\u00a0Deborah Wesley<\/a> is running as a Republican, and she has strong fundraising as well, with nearly $94,000 in hard money and more than $27,000 in the supportive\u00a0Building a Stronger Jacksonville<\/a> political committee.<\/p>\n

Libertarian\u00a0Addison Patrick has raised a little more than $5,500. Candidates from her party have sometimes over-performed, including in a race against Freeman, where the LP\u2019s\u00a0Eric Parker got more than a third of the vote as the sole opponent.<\/p>\n

Freeman is running to replace term-limited\u00a0Wyman Duggan in the state House. He has pledged to resign as soon as a replacement is elected.<\/p>\n

If no one gets a majority in August, the top two candidates will advance to the General Election ballot in November.<\/p>\n

From there, the winner likely will run for a full term in 2027\u2019s municipal elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Democrats are in a super-minority on the Jacksonville City Council despite having the registration edge\u00a0in Duval County, but…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353209,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[140161,140162,122422,116,118,117,144387,43711],"class_list":["post-353208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-addison-patrick","tag-building-a-stronger-jacksonville","tag-deborah-wesley","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-jacksonville-together","tag-mone-holder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353208","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=353208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353208\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}