message of unity<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cWhat we cannot afford is personal attacks or infighting that weakens our party headed into the general election. We need Republican unity, not Republican division. We have already seen how internal fighting hurts our efforts,\u201d the message reads in part.<\/p>\n
Replies were turned off on the post, meaning it was a one-way ticket to Quote Tweet City. By and large, most of those QTs were, shall we say, critical.<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s as it should be after leadership let down the party faithful and shirked accountability.<\/p>\n
Republicans have controlled city government for most of this century. Democrat Alvin Brown got elected mayor after Republican Mike Hogan thought he\u2019d coast to victory back in 2011, but that mayoralty lasted one term. After eight years of Republican Lenny Curry, Democrat Donna Deegan overcame resource disadvantages and defeated Daniel Davis, a loss that Republicans still rue.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s created some downstream pressures. The John Peyton\/Daniel Davis wing is fine enough with the status quo. Lots of donors, especially those with business with the city, won\u2019t bet against the mayor. And the only credible Republican candidate looking at the race is House Speaker Wyman Duggan, who has a little more than a million dollars in his political committee and the connections to raise more.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But as Republicans saw this month, Democratic money folks are motivated \u2013 recall that philanthropist Steve Pajcic gave Democrat Mone\u2019 Holder\u2019s political committee more than half a million dollars ahead of the August election. And that was just to ensure a 13-6 GOP advantage on City Council during next month\u2019s budget vote as opposed to the 14-5 one.<\/p>\n
There are many who say that Republicans should accept the \u201cinevitable\u201d and wait until 2031 to make a run for the mayor\u2019s office. Of course, some folks said that in 2015, when Alvin Brown was still popular even though his triangulation on expanding the Human Rights Ordinance to include LGBTQ+ people frustrated the left.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t see Duggan waiting. He will have access to the best possible consultants, and likely they won\u2019t include the architects of Davis\u2019 2023 disaster. And besides, if he did wait until 2031, there would be a crowded field of credible candidates \u2014 and likely a Democratic coalescence around someone like City Councilman Jimmy Peluso or Property Appraiser Joyce Morgan.<\/p>\n
But the current Republican Party leadership is less than reliable. A chair who has never won an election may be many things, but an architect of a political machine is not one of them.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Expect for Republicans to figure this one out over the next few months. If not, it will be four more years of Deegan and a hope that some second-term scandal currently not on the horizon provides stimulus for the opposition next decade. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One rule of Jacksonville politics: At all times, at least one local party must be in distress of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":385804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117],"class_list":["post-385803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385803","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=385803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/385803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/385804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=385803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=385803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=385803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}