Mayoral Win in Deep-Red Florida Gives Democrats Reason for Hope

The largest American city with a Republican mayor, Jacksonville, Florida, this week elected a Democrat, disrupting nearly 30 years of GOP leadership. While it probably doesn’t mean Florida is going blue in 2024, it does show a path for Democratic victory in the suburbs.As of Wednesday morning, Mayor-elect Donna Deegan led a Republican who was backed by Governor DeSantis, Daniel Davis, 52 percent to 48 percent in the race to succeed Mayor Lenny Curry. Absentee votes are still being counted, though it’s numerically impossible for Mr. Davis to win at this point.Ms. Deegan’s victory comes off a campaign focused on local knowledge, inclusivity, and crime. She will become the first female mayor of Jacksonville. Ms. Deegan, a Jacksonville local, worked as a local news anchor at First Coast News in Jacksonville and parlayed that public trust into her winning bid for mayor.She is also known locally for her work with the DONNA Foundation and hosting an annual marathon, both of which fundraise to support medical providers, patients, and survivors of breast cancer. Ms. Deegan herself is a cancer survivor.According to a professor of political science at the University of North Florida at Jacksonville, Nicholas Seabrook, Ms. Deegan “is typical of the sort of Democrat we’ve seen winning and overcoming the national environment.”Mr. Seabrook tells the Sun that though Jacksonville is not necessarily a blue area, Ms. Deegan was a candidate who was able to ride local popularity and trust to victory, similar to Representative Mary Peltola in the 2022 Alaska House race.“After being won by Republicans consistently through 2016, Joe Biden won Jacksonville in 2020,” Mr. Seabrook explained. “It swung back to DeSantis heavily in 2022.”He credited Ms. Seasbrook’s victory in large part to her appeal to independents and some Republicans — voters who mostly would have been won through persuasion.Her victory also suggests continuing Democratic strength among suburban and exurban voters, given that the city of Jacksonville encompasses all of Duval County, and the two entities share one government.Mr. Seabrook does caution against reading too much into the results from Jacksonville, though, because it has been trending toward Democrats while Florida overall has been trending Republican.“I don’t know that this tells us much about what is going to happen in Florida in 2024 as a whole,” Mr. Seasbrook said. “Even if Joe Biden wins election in 2024, I don’t expect him to win the state of Florida.”In Mr. Seabrook’s opinion, the results from Tuesday night are a valuable data point in a larger trend that has worked to advantage Democrats in 2018, 2020, and 2022.When Democrats are able to frame the election as a choice between “a steady hand” and “an ideological extremist,” they tend to win, or at least to outperform what the fundamentals of the election would suggest they should expect.“It’s important to not read too much into any single race other than how it plays into the broader pattern,” Mr. Seabrook said. “It shows a playbook by which Democrats can win elections.”

Mayoral Win in Deep-Red Florida Gives Democrats Reason for Hope

Mayoral Win in Deep-Red Florida Gives Democrats Reason for Hope

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