Days after the Duval Democratic Executive Committee came out swinging against his pension tax proposal, Mayor Lenny Curry offered a counterpunch Monday with dozens of people behind him.
The “unprecedented coalition of support” of close to 50 included religious and business leaders, City Council and Duval County School Board members, nonprofit and cultural heads, young, old, Republican, Democrat, white and black.
They were at City Hall to say “Yes for Jacksonville” in support of extending a half-cent sales tax dedicated to paying down the city’s crippling pension obligations currently totaling about $2.8 billion.
But, make no mistake about it, the news conference with the boisterous support served two purposes.
The first was timing.
Early voting is underway and many others will head to the polls Aug. 30, leaving just about a week before the critical decision is finalized.
Time is running out to make that impression on voters, many of whom remain undecided according to the most recent poll conducted by the University of North Florida.
The second was the response.
When the Democratic Executive Committee took a stand last week against the pension plan, Curry called it disappointing and “100 percent partisan politics” by a small faction.
Curry led off his Monday event by again referring to the group as a “small group of political opposition” and said he hoped media would cover the story of the united effort for the pension tax.
He again referenced the opposition as an “incredibly small group” and chided the media for last week “making it a big story when it wasn’t.”
Instead, he said, the story should be the unified support that’s coming from all backgrounds and creeds, ZIP codes and party affiliations.
That included two well-known Democrats who are standing in support of the measure.
Nat Glover, the former sheriff and current Edward Waters College president, is someone Curry said hesitated when he was asked to support the cause. Glover co-chairs the Yes for Jacksonville political committee pushing marketing efforts for the pension referendum.
Glover called the pension problem a personal issue for him, describing himself as a trustee for Jacksonville. That includes his time in law enforcement as well as serving on the Police and Fire Pension Fund board, which last year voted on the first phase of reform.
“Now it’s left up to you to step up and do the right thing,” Glover said. “And that is to say yes for Jacksonville.”
City Council member Tommy Hazouri, a Democratic former mayor, serves on the finance team for Yes for Jacksonville.
He said recent budgets have been the easiest he can remember to pass because there hasn’t been money to go around.
The only two approaches to pay down the pension issue, Hazouri said, are “tax or tax.”
Whether the support from local leaders represents the masses of Jacksonville voters remains to be seen. Curry said he believes it does.
He declined to say what internal campaign polling showed about the level of support the referendum has. Instead, he simply said he was confident in the trajectory of results so far.
A July 11 poll by the University of North Florida Public Opinion Research Laboratory showed some level of support for the effort from 41 percent, while 33 showed some form of opposition. The remaining 26 percent did not know.
The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.
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