by Sean McManus
Staff Writer
University of North Florida professor Matt Corrigan cites Jacksonville as a case study for the rise of the Republican party in the South and he has a telling statistic —in a city that grows by over five percent annually, the number of Democrats is actually decreasing in raw numbers.
That’s a tough pill to swallow, Corrigan notes, for a party that “once called the southern region ‘The Solid South.’”
Corrigan has been teaching political science at UNF for about seven years and he is the director of the public opinion research lab at the school’s new Florida Center for Public Policy and Leadership.
Corrigan paints a picture of Jacksonville, distinct from Florida in general, as mirroring the deep South in terms of its political traditions.
It was heavily Democratic until the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in 1965 started to erode unity within the Democratic Party. Jacksonville continued to vote for Democrats on the local level, though, and Republicans on the presidential level. And most of its political history was predicated on the race issue — something that many historians say stunted the South’s growth by focusing attention away from education and economic development.
But the tide shifted. While vestiges of the Democrat monolith extended into the early 1990s (there were no Republican mayoral candidates in 1991), presidential dominance has leaked down to the city and state level.
While Democrats still have a majority in Jacksonville (49 percent to 35 percent,) Corrigan said that’s mostly just on paper.
“Not all, but a lot of the Democrats in Jacksonville are functional Republicans,” he said. “And considering that Duval County, in the early days, was 95 percent Democratic, labeling a voter’s ideology by their party would be overly simplistic.”
Corrigan and others contribute the shift to a trend occurring in cities all over the “New South” — an area that encourages businesses with low taxes, maintains a high concentration of military bases and is conservative on social issues.
“The other factor is redistricting,” said Corrigan. “When the Department of Justice started redrawing voting districts as a way that would increase minority representation in Congress, they created some very conservative districts at the same time.”
Districts in Jacksonville continue to be redrawn to try to create a fair balance. But Corrigan noted that it gets tricky when you start talking about other minority groups besides African-Americans. That is especially true in Florida where there is a high number of Hispanic voters.
Corrigan thinks that while race has always been a critical factor when analyzing the political history of the South — he also identifies others as equally relevant.
“What about the impact of churches?” he asked, “where much of African-American political activism started.” He recalled that George W. Bush was in Jacksonville the day before the election and went directly to a church function.
And Corrigan wants to conduct a study on the political differences between people who are from Jacksonville and people who move here. He said that a lot of the African-Americans who fled the South in the 1960s and 1970s are now moving back.
Those kinds of projects will be part of the work conducted under the auspices of the Center, which was started by former UNF president Adam Herbert last year as a way generate accurate focused public policy information and include students in the process.
Using the Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) system, students will poll Jacksonville adults on educational issues next month. The Center will also be conducting a statewide poll on a yet-to-be-decided topic with the Roper Center at the University of Connecticut later this year.
Corrigan said in the future he’d like to generate statistics on how the city views vouchers, school discipline and FCAT testing.
Asked about how active Corrigan gets in local politics, he said “usually only for family and friends.” He helped Reggie Fullwood, a former student. His cousin, Mike Corrigan, is running for Jim Overton’s seat on City Council next year.
He said there’s reason to feel good about the progress Jacksonville has made in race relations, noting that people here are trying to tackle the problem head-on. “And it’s a lot better than in other cities.” One of the Center’s projects down the road will be a focus on children’s issues.
As for the future, he said Florida is interesting because we are “bimodal,” meaning we have lots of young people and lots of old people. That means there will be a major fight over resources between the two groups who use the most.