Incumbent Democratic Mayor Alvin Brown (left) and his challenger, former RPOF Chairman Lenny Curry (right)
Tuesday, May 19, is a big deal for Alvin Brown. Besides the fact that it's Hồ Chí Minh's Birthday, it's the date of the Jacksonville mayoral election.
On May 17, 2011, when Brown, the de facto Democratic nominee, defeated the de facto Republican nominee, it was a shocker and an upset. He was the first Democrat to serve as Mayor since 1991, and was the first African-American Mayor of Jacksonville ever.
The Florida Democratic Party and Democratic strategists rightly called Brown a rising star in Florida politics. Less than a year after his historic election, a poll by the University of North Florida put his approval rating at 75% and his disapproval at a mere 11%. Was Jacksonville turning blue? After all, President Obama received 49% of the vote in Duval County in 2008, and even Alex Sink, losing to Rick Scott by a mere 1% statewide, received 46% in Duval in 2010.
While his re-election in 2015 seemed like no sure thing, it seemed as though Alvin Brown was strongly positioned to win a second term. He is no longer.
Though he started out in a strong position, his tenure over the last four years has been, at times, rocky.
In 2012, he initially refused to endorse President Obama's re-election bid. This was a slap in the face to the Florida Democratic Party, which put a lot of effort behind his 2011 upset and almost entirely funded his campaign. Though he ended up announcing that he was voting to re-elect the President, he said that he would not campaign on his behalf. President Obama obviously ended up winning re-election, but his victory in Florida was narrow.
He disappointed a lot of his supporters, who strongly supported a proposed city ordinance banning discrimination based on sexual orientation, by refusing to take a stance on it. Some of his supporters even recall Brown publicly backing such legislation during the 2011 campaign, and Equality Florida emphasized that Brown's public support in 2011 contributed to his narrow victory over his opponent. It wasn't as though the proposal lacked broad, bipartisan support, either. The same UNF poll that put Brown's approval rating at 75% showed that the proposed ordinance was favored by 58% of Jacksonville voters. Plus, it was being publicly supported by the former Chairman of the Florida Chamber of Commerce and the city's former Republican mayor. The measure ended up being defeated by the City Council, 10-9, and Brown has still refused to say anything other than that he opposes discrimination.
Last year, he refused to endorse Charlie Crist, the Democratic nominee for Governor, at all, despite the fact that he tried to get Crist's endorsement when he first ran for Mayor. He wasn't alone in that, though; Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn and Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer both refused to endorse Crist, too. This year, he's actually been angling to either get Governor Rick Scott to endorse him, or to stay out of the race altogether. Despite the fact that Brown called Scott "a good governor" and that the city was "better off" because of the "good relationship" that he has with Scott, the Governor ended up endorsing Lenny Curry, his opponent this year. That didn't exactly do much to endear himself to the people who would be inclined to vote for him.
He's hemorrhaged support from some of the other people who helped him get elected in 2011. In 2011, Peter Rummell, a wealthy businessman who had historically helped Republican candidates for state office, endorsed Brown and spent $150,000 to elect him. Last year, Rummell harshly criticized Brown, and said he wouldn't endorse him again:
"He does not know how to manage. That's clear," Rummell told the Times-Union in an interview Friday. "He has no courage. ... He's wimped out. He's deferred to City Council. It's embarrassing the way he’s handled himself."
His support with African-American voters, which was critical to his election in 2011 and is critical to his campaign this year, has wavered, as well. The Jacksonville Brotherhood of Firefighters, a prominent group of predominantly black firefighters that endorsed him in 2011,
initially declined to endorse Brown this year:
The Jacksonville Brotherhood of Firefighters, a powerful and historic black professional association, has so far declined to endorse Jacksonville’s first black mayor, Alvin Brown, for reelection, as it did in 2011. And after Brown was a no-show at a meeting last Monday that he had requested with the Brotherhood’s membership — a meeting where more than 100 black firefighters and police turned out to talk — the Brotherhood invited Brown’s white Republican rival, Lenny Curry, to come court their endorsement instead.
Though
he ended up getting the Brotherhood's endorsement—and that of the Brotherhood of Police Officers, another predominantly black organization—it contributed to an
overall perception that Brown "hasn't done enough for the African American community."
And, when the Duval County Clerk decided to end all courthouse weddings in response to marriage equality in the state, Brown initially refused to comment on whether he agreed with the clerk's decision. He eventually changed his tune...kind of:
First Coast News: So this is a day to talk about the river, but I would be remiss if I didn't ask you to weigh in on Ronnie Fussell's decision to end courthouse weddings?
Mayor Alvin Brown: "I don't know what his decision was. Give me a sense of what you're referring to?"
First Coast News: "He decided to end all courthouse weddings in the wake of the legalization of gay marriage"
Mayor: "So, uh, I believe you should follow the law. You should follow the law. Law says people have the right to get married then we should do that."
So Brown's had a rocky tenure. He's had the occasional conservative streak, and he has, at times, turned his back on the people who elected him in the first place. But he seems to have turned the page on that, and has run a very strong campaign so far. In the primary election, Brown placed first over Lenny Curry, the former Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, and exceeded expectations (at least
mine) a little bit. He won 43% of the vote, a little higher than polling suggested he would receive, to Curry's 38% and City Councilman Bill Bishop's 17%. Bishop, though he initially said that he wouldn't endorse either Brown or Curry,
ended up endorsing Brown. He's had former President Bill Clinton
come to campaign for him. He's done well in consolidating Democratic and African-American support for his re-election, as evidenced by a number of polls.
Speaking of polls, they've been all over the place this year. A January poll from St. Pete Polls put Curry ahead of Brown in a runoff election, 45-42. After the primary, a March poll from St. Pete Polls had Brown ahead of Curry, 49-46. A poll put out in late April by an unknown pollster for an unknown business group had Brown ahead of Curry, 44-41. This, according to POLITICO reporter Marc Caputo, tracked closely with both party's internal polling. Then, another poll from St. Pete Polls that was released earlier this month, had Curry ahead of Brown, 49-45. But, as David Nir has pointed out before, St. Pete Polls doesn't have a great track record, so take all of these with a grain of salt. The final public poll (as far as I am aware), which was released on Sunday night and was conducted on May 15 on behalf of Associated Industries of Florida, which is supporting Curry, has curry up over Brown, 44-43. So, to use the cliche, it'll all come down to turnout.
Jacksonville Mayor Alvin Brown appearing with former President Bill Clinton in 2012.
So that's a lot of backstory. Where are we now, with the election on Tuesday? Thankfully, we have a wealth of data regarding absentee and early voting that I parsed through to come up with some initial conclusions.
First, it's important to understand where turnout was in 2011.
Overall, as this table shows, Democrats had a 5.52% edge over Republicans in turnout. Considering that Brown won his election by less than 1%, this might seem strange, but Duval County has a fair amount of Demosaurs, who probably weren't all that inclined to vote for a black Democrat when there was a Republican available.
Overall, there's consistently been a slight Democratic edge over Republicans in overall registration. Data was not available (at least, that I could readily find) on what the registration picture was prior to the 2011 mayoral election.
But if you look at where turnout is right now (as of the end of the day on Sunday), it looks worse than it did in 2011.
Democrats' edge over Republicans is 5.34%, following a spectacular day for early voting on Sunday (nearly 10,000 people voted, and Democrats almost doubled their edge, which was 3.02% at the end of the day on Saturday). This is slightly smaller than their overall edge in 2011, which might be a cause for concern. When I initially saw that, I was a little concerned. Then I realized that I was looking at the data incorrectly. The 2011 turnout statistics included absentee votes, early votes,
and election day votes, but the 2015 turnout statistics obviously lack election day votes, because election day is on Tuesday. So I broke down the 2011 turnout.
Prior to election day in 2011, Democrats had less than a 2% edge (1.82%, to be exact) over Republicans. But on election day, they did really well, outperforming Republicans by more than 7%. This led to an overall turnout edge of about 5.52% at the end of voting on election day.
So the current edge, which is 5.34%, is much larger than the 1.82% edge four years ago. That's a reason to be optimistic. The potential problem here is the problem that we observed in last year's gubernatorial election, too. The 2012 Obama campaign did a great job of convincing voters to vote absentee, and in Florida, an absentee ballot request for one election can extend for up to four years if the voter indicates that they want it to. The Crist campaign and I were enthused by the absentee vote in 2014, because though it reflected a Republican advantage, it was considerably narrower than in previous years. We anticipated that the narrower margin, combined with strong early and election day votes, would lead to an overall victory. It didn't, because a lot of the people voting absentee would have voted on election day, and they simply changed when they would vote. It's possible that the same dynamic is playing out here, but it would be almost impossible to tell. It could be that the Brown campaign is doing an excellent job of mobilizing voters, many of whom didn't vote in the 2011 election, explaining the overall jump in turnout. Or it could be that many voters, who were going to vote regardless, simply switched to voting via absentee ballot or voting early rather than voting on election day.
But there's reason to be cautiously and guardedly optimistic. If you consider that Democrats will probably expand their edge on election day, their edge at the end of the day on election day will probably be a little bit bigger than it was in 2011. But if their edge remains the same, then they'll have a problem. Registered Democrats probably need to hit 48-49% (a little better than in 2011) for Brown to win, and they're at 47% right now.
Here's the caveat: this analysis is based on the 2011 Jacksonville mayoral election. If you look at the turnout trends in past elections, this trend becomes a little fuzzier.
Note that in 2014, Democrats did better on election day than their absentee/early voting numbers...but only slightly. Their deficit for the absentee/early voting turnout was 3.35%, and their deficit on election day was...3.33%. Hardly a change at all.
In 2012 and 2008, Democrats did significantly better in the early/absentee voting than on election day. In 2010, they did significantly better on election day than in early/absentee voting.
But 2007 is interesting. Despite the fact that it was a low-turnout election that was ultimately decided in the March primary, the results are very, very similar to 2011. The difference is that, in 2007, Democrats did not lead at all in the early/absentee voting. But still, their strong lead on election day resulted in a relatively narrow overall lead. It should be noted, though, that Democrats lost this election in a landslide. But the overall turnout trends are important to note.
Continuing the analysis of turnout, I decided to focus a little more closely on the 2014 gubernatorial election. Modeling the turnout composition today from the 2014 gubernatorial results, there's more good news for Brown: the precincts that have turned out the highest so far are precincts that were more likely to vote for Crist last year. A weighted average (computed with the help of wwmiv) by the total votes cast so far this year in each precinct of the percentage that Crist received in each is 43.6%, which means that Brown only needs to outperform Crist by 6.4% to hit 50%+1. That's doable.
Then, I looked at the ten precincts with the highest voter turnout so far, and I compared turnout as of now with turnout in 2014 at a comparable point (basically, absentee votes and early votes). What I found was interesting.
Though it's far from a diverse sample, you'll note that five of the ten precincts voted for Crist with upwards of 85% of the vote, and the other five voted for him with less than 35% of the vote. The precincts that voted for Crist are overperforming turnout from a comparable point in 2014, while the precincts that voted for Scott are significantly underperforming their 2014 turnout.
So while it's my educated guess that Democrats will increase their edge on election day, it's far from a sure thing. But will it be enough? Personally, my gut says no. I think that, while Brown has run a strong campaign, his time in office has alienated enough supporters that he will lose. Jacksonville remains a conservative city, and Curry is nowhere near as extreme or as poor of a campaigner as was Mike Hogan, Brown's opponent in 2011. It's my hope that I'm wrong. I was wrong about the gubernatorial election last year, but from the start of the year to now, I've never had confidence in Brown's ability to win re-election. But the data gives me pause in concluding that Brown will lose. What I'm looking at right now looks like the makeup that Brown needs to win. But it'll be extremely close, I think.
And that about sums it up. We will have to see what happens, and this is something that I will be watching closely this week. I hope that this was an enjoyable read, and that you walked away with a greater understanding of the election.
Wed May 20, 2015 at 7:14 AM PT: I closely watched the turnout yesterday all throughout the day, and closely analyzed the results as they started coming in. It was apparently pretty quickly that Brown wasn't going to emerge victorious, but it remained close throughout the night. I would strongly recommend that everyone read Matthew Isbell's take on the results, because it serves as a good and thorough follow-up to everything discussed in the diary.
Here are a few more things that I can add:
• Though it was considered likely a few weeks ago that the Democrat running for Duval County Sheriff, Ken Jefferson, would outpace Brown and win, that didn't end up happening. Jefferson ended up narrowly losing to the Republican candidate, 52-48. Surprisingly, this was not only a slightly wider margin than Brown lost by, but this was a contest in which more votes were cast than in the mayoral election!
• We ended up losing one of the at-large city council races. Councilwoman Kimberly Daniels, a Democrat, lost by a fairly wide margin to Anna Lopez Brosche, falling 56-44. But losing Daniels isn't quite a loss for the progressive movement or for the Democratic Party. Daniels was certainly not a progressive Democrat, bragging about her pro-life, pro-NRA, "pro-family" (code for anti-gay) values, and campaigning as the "true conservative," while attacking Brosche for being a "liberal." Outside of that, she's an interesting character:
Daniels, whose sermons can be heard on local radio and seen on YouTube, was criticized during the 2011 election for her remarks opposing homosexuality. She has said critics have falsely portrayed her as hostile against gays.
In 2012, she was featured in an episode of "Taboo," a show on the National Geographic channel. During the segment, she’s shown speaking in “tongues” and wildly performing exorcisms at her church. She also shares details about her troubled past as a drug addict and prostitute and speaks about how religion helped transform her life.
I'm not exactly crying over her loss.
• However, we more than made up for Daniels' loss with the victory of Democrat Tommy Hazouri in another at-large race. Hazouri ended up defeating Republican Jeff Youngblood with 55% of the vote, an impressive showing in a conservative city.
• We also picked up the 1st District, with Democrat Joyce Morgan slightly outpacing Mike Anania, 52-48. The 1st District is the closest thing that the City Council has to a "tossup" district, with Obama winning it 51-48 and Scott winning it 53-42. (I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before, but Crist really underperformed in Duval County.) So all in all, despite losing the mayoral election, we actually gained a seat on the City Council, reducing Republicans' 13-6 advantage to a 12-7 advantage. While this is good news, the better news is that it's definitely possible to flip the Council to our control if we run the table on all of the at-large races. If we win Districts 1, 7, 8, 9, 10, and all five of the at-large seats, we would have a 10-9 advantage. Is it likely to happen? Not necessarily, but if we run a strong citywide candidate in 2019 (maybe someone like Mia Jones or Tommy Hazouri?) we could definitely do it.
• We came close in the final at-large district on the ballot, in which Democrat Ju'Coby Pittman lost to Republican Samuel Newby, 49-51. In District 2, which was a bit of a reach as far as targets go, Democrat Lisa King lost to Republican Al Ferraro, 42-58. But considering that the 2nd District is a district that Romney won, 67-32 and that Scott won, 67-28, that's a great performance for our candidate. In the 4th District, Democrat Ramon Day lost to Scott Wilson, 37-63. This was relatively on par with the partisan performance of the district, which Romney won 56-42 and Scott won 60-34.
• There were two heavily-Democratic districts in which two Democrats faced off. In the 7th District, which Obama won 77-22 and Crist won 72-25, Reggie Gaffney, the brother of former City Councilman Johnny Gaffney, defeated George Spencer, 51-49. This is a bit of a disappointment for progressives, because Gaffney is a bit of DINO. He was a registered Republican for nearly a decade, and his brother was the
decisive vote against a human rights ordinance, and
actually endorsed Lenny Curry this year. In the 8th District, which Obama won 75-24, and Crist won 69-29, Katrina Brown defeated Pat Lockett-Felder, also 51-49.
• Overall, Brown outperformed Crist by 7.31%, and Obama by 1.02%. As others have pointed out, this is a good performance. Had Obama replicated this performance statewide, he would've added over 86,000 votes to his statewide margin. Had Charlie Crist done the same, he would've added over 372,000 votes to his performance, and he clearly would have won. While these are imperfect comparisons because all performances are not created equal, it just goes to show that Brown didn't do poorly compared to the benchmarks in the city; he just didn't win because he didn't outperform them enough.
Here's actually an interesting point about turnout. In the precincts where Brown outperformed Crist by greater than 7.31% (the countywide average), turnout was 34.23%, which was below the countywide turnout of 36.89%. In the precincts where Brown outperformed Crist by less than 7.31% (including two precincts in which he underperformed), turnout was 38.10%, greater than the countywide average.
Turnout was actually higher in the precincts where Brown performed better than his countywide performance (0.70% higher), and lower in the precincts where he performed worse than his countywide performance (0.25% lower). But with such a small difference in the numbers, it's a largely inconsequential tidbit of information.
