Ron DeSantis had endorsed Davis but in the half-assed manner that we've come to expect. “In addition to putting more officers on the streets," Deegan said during their debate last month, "we need to focus on things like literacy and food deserts and other things that contribute to what ultimately are higher crime numbers." Deegan deftly deflected this nonsense, stating (correctly) that improving police accountability would actually help lower the crime rate. He criticized her for supporting racial justice protesters after George Floyd's murder and claimed that she would make Jacksonville the murder capital of Florida (homicides have significantly increased over the past eight years with a Republican in charge). This is about creating a city where our kids will want to stay and raise theirs."ĭavis had trotted out the boilerplate Republican smears against Deegan. We have the most beautiful mosaic of a city that you’ve ever seen in your entire life, and everybody’s going to have a voice in a Donna Deegan administration."Īfter her daughter embraced her and the crowd cheered, Deegan continued: "This is about my kids. ![]() "And the only way we were ever going to do that was by bringing everybody together. “I’m so excited about creating a city that sees everybody, that brings everybody in, that gives everybody a voice, a city that truly does finally reach its absolutely amazing potential," she said. It's not surprising, given her professional background, that Deegan is a skilled communicator, but her speech was a true barnburner that called out Florida's right-wing reactionary politics in the most moving way. “I made a decision when we got into this race that, no matter what happened, no matter what the landscape was like, we were going to lead with love over fear,” Deegan said. He said he'd sign some gross loyalty pledge to the bigoted Moms for Liberty regarding education, medical care, and “moral upbringing of their children.”ĭuring her victory speech, Deegan held up a photo of her grandfather and talked about the "five generations of love" her family had for Jacksonville. Yet Davis did embrace DeSantis-style positions on the LGBTQ community. Davis, chief executive of the local chamber of commerce, was considered a business-friendly "normal" Republican, and he'd crushed Deegan in fundraising by a margin of four-to-one. Republicans can't spin this as a fluke victory because Deegan ran against a MAGA extremist soft-focus loon like Kari Lake. It's OK if she starts measuring the drapes.) (Parker technically only won the Democratic nomination for mayor, but Democrats account for 85 percent of the city's electorate. Cherelle Parker made similar history in Philadelphia last night. She is also Jacksonville's first woman mayor. Now, that's Fort Worth, Texas (935,508).ĭeegan, a former local TV anchor and founder of a breast cancer research organization, whooped Davis 52 to 48 percent. Jacksonville was also the most populous city (954,614) in the US with a Republican mayor. ![]() ![]() Jacksonville has elected only one Democratic mayor, Alvin Brown, since 1993. The current Republican mayor, Lenny Curry, is term-limited out of office, and Davis was considered a favorite to win the Republican stronghold. ![]() Florida has lately been a source of ongoing woe, so I admit I was a little choked up last night when Democrat Donna Deegan defeated Republican Daniel Davis in the Jacksonville mayoral race.
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