Republican Mike Weinstein entered the mayor’s race in September 2001. The former Super Bowl and Jacksonville Economic Development Commission boss met recently with the editorial staff of the Daily Record to talk about the race, the issues and his perceptions of the city’s future.
Question: Talk for a minute about where you are today and how the campaign is going.
Answer: As far as a community and a campaign, I think it’s wide open. I think it’s really wide open for anybody to catch on and develop a relationship with the community that catapults them to success. I think it’s wide open and I think that’s good for me and our campaign. We started off with the lot of people having pockets of support and those pockets haven’t mushroomed into enough support that it becomes a runaway. I think it’s wide open for those that are in the beginning process of becoming a candidate — those of us that haven’t run for office before have a shot. It’s harder when you haven’t run before.
Q: How different is campaigning from anything you’ve done before? You’ve been an attorney, you ran the JEDC and worked with the Super Bowl Host Committee. Now, you want to be a politician.
A: I want to mayor, I don’t know if I want to be a politician. It’s different than anything. You go through experiences in life that you can’t really relate to others in a way they can understand it. The tragedy of the [Elizabeth] Smart family is, as one of the broadcasters said, ‘You just can’t put yourself in that situation.’ Running [for office] is something that is very unique. You’re always on stage. You’re performing from the beginning of the day to the end of the day and that’s demanding of you in a way you’re not used to. I’ve taught school at the high school and middle school level. I’ve taught college and grad school and I’ve been on television and I’ve been in the courtroom and I’ve been lots of places — in front of City Council — so I’ve performed a lot. But it’s not an all day function where you’re always — and I don’t mean performing in a negative way — but you’re always being looked at differently. And you’re always being judged from the moment you leave home until you get back. You’re being judged by people who have to make a decision about who they are going to vote for.
Q: Have you considered going back into the public sector if you aren’t elected mayor?
A: I wouldn’t take anything off the table, but I really don’t know what I would do. But I do know I would have some legitimate options.
Q: You said everybody has their own pockets of support. Do you see in the next two, three, four weeks a couple of people dropping out and shifting their support?
A: If I said everybody, I meant the ones that have been elected before. People running that have been elected before tend to come with a group of people that have volunteered for them before, with people that are definitely committed to their effort. I don’t see anyone leaving before the primary.
Q: So, everybody is in?
A: It would be a little bit more difficult now. There’s still the opportunity to leave for personal reasons or leave because you really want to help others, but it’s more complicated after qualifying.
Q: Is your goal to just make it to the general election.
A: The goal is to be one of the first two. I really look forward to that campaign where you get into legitimate debates and you really can get at the issues and you can really get to begin to know the candidates. The challenge for me is dealing with the seven of us at the same time. It’s so much more difficult to distinguish yourself when there’s seven people having what some people call debates, but they aren’t debates. They are forums. With a minute here and two or three minutes there, it’s more difficult. Fortunately, I’ve got a lot of support and a reasonable amount of resources, so we’ll get our message out. But the best way to get your message out is one-on-one or maybe three people in a legitimate debate where you can go back and forth.
Q: How are you different from the other candidates? What’s your edge?
A: We all have experiences, so one person isn’t more experienced than the other. My set of experiences are very well in line with preparing someone to be mayor of the city at this time. Maybe not at other times, but at this particular time, we’re in the middle of so many projects and we really have a community that’s comfortable with the way we’ve been governing over the last 12 years that I’ve been associated with, but really the last eight. And we need to continue to improve of what we’ve done and not change courses. This is not the time in our history to take drastic changes in where we are going. We are going in a good direction. I’m almost feeling like an incumbent in that I’ve been associated with so many of the things that we’ve been doing.
Q: You have a lot of experience, but not many people know that. Does that concern you?
A: People know what I’ve done, they just don’t know I did it. They know the Super Bowl is coming, they know a lot of things, but they don’t necessarily associate Mike Weinstein with those things and that’s what we are trying to get out. We’re trying to associate what’s been happening the last eight years with my role. I haven’t done things alone, but I’ve been in a key spot. I’ve been the point person for a lot of things we’ve been doing and thank goodness the community is pleased with what we’ve been doing. I just have to make them aware of it.
Q: Your television commercial touches on all of that, but it only does it in 30 seconds. Is that repetitive enough [for the voters] or is 30 seconds not enough and you’ll go through other mediums?
A: They are all pieces of the puzzle. We’ll be changing our commercial in the next couple of days and we’ll go through three if not four different versions of messages. But it’s a confirmation. The debate helped me a lot. Stories that are in the press help me. If it’s confirming messages, it’s good. If it’s conflicting messages, then it’s a problem. If you do a profile on me and you don’t illustrate that I have experience, then that’s a problem because it doesn’t mesh with the other messages that we’re trying to get out. Thirty seconds at a clip is what we’ll stay with, but there will be different messages as we move through the campaign. And, it should be adequate. There’s a line of saturation where it almost becomes offensive.
Q: In fund raising, you’re slightly behind John Peyton. Is TV going to be the battle ground in matching him?
A: I won’t be able to match him and I appreciate you saying slightly behind. I put it [the gap] at a little broader than slightly behind. I’m sure we’ll probably be $400,000 or $500,000 less than John and a couple hundred thousand dollars more than any below me. We’ll be second, I’m sure, in fund raising. It’s basically television. It was public that John had purchased about half a million dollars of TV time. We’ve had other candidates do the same thing — [attorneys seeking office] W.C. Gentry and Wayne Hogan and others put a lot of money into television and many times that’s not successful. It’s a matter of having enough and making sure your message is out enough. Beyond that, it doesn’t matter as much. I’m confident we’ll be between $900,000 and $1 million before the election and that should be adequate. That’s where we were from the beginning. If you look at my interviews from a year ago, [the goal] it’s always been $850,000 to $1 million — that was our target. And we’ll meet it. Will it be as much as John? No way. No way.
Q: The last time you came to see us for an interview, you told us running for mayor didn’t interest you. When you made the announcement, you said the events of Sept. 11 were the turning point. Is that still the reason?
A: It’s mostly that. I had been asked to consider running for a long time. I didn’t realize how important it is to have someone who can stand up in a time of need. Not that others can’t, but I realized during Sept. 11 that the coordination of a lot of resources and the ability to calm a community and talk your way through a crisis; I didn’t realize how important it was until that day. It was nice to do the Super Bowl and it was nice to do the Jaguars and it was nice to bring in business, it was nice to do those things. It hit me like a brick that all those things can be nice, but they are not nearly as important as being there. It [running] also goes back to my public safety goals. I spent my first career in law enforcement and I enjoyed it and I felt a real purpose there. Public safety has always been an important part of life. It hit me that if I’m ever needed, I want to be there. God forbid we ever have a problem like that, but if we do I want to help.
Q: Outside of Better Jacksonville, what’s the single biggest issue and what do you do about it?
A: In the debate on TV, I said the key to a person’s future is their education. That’s the key to our community’s future. We are absolutely tied to how well we prepare people for work. With six years in economic development, I understand the importance of preparing people for work. We have all the pieces to be the best there is: we have a great work force, we have a growing work force, whether we like it or not, we have 20,000 people coming to Northeast Florida every year to join our work force. We can’t close the door behind us. We have the numbers of people. We have the reputation around the country of a strong working community. We work hard. We are not tourism, we are not retirement. We are a working community. And we have all the natural assets that are attractive: the beaches, the river, the fishing and just being in Florida. The only piece that we are missing to the attraction of the best jobs in the country is how we prepare people for work. If we want the best parks and the best libraries and the best cultural districts and all the other quality of life issues, we have to have the best jobs. Work force development starts before school. It starts in readiness, goes through elementary and middle school and high school and vocational and junior college and college and grad school. It’s an entire continuum of a process of how we prepare people for work. That’s my focus. I think being mayor is about two things: protecting the community, which you do through resources and making sure we have properly equipped and manned and compensated and trained people. So it’s protecting the community and preparing the community for the future. If you are mayor and responsible for preparing the community for the future, the most important element of our preparation is how we prepare people for work. I will be a mayor that’s totally focused on preparing people through our education system. I’m not going to take the organizational analysis and say, ‘The School Board should run our system.’ But it should be a system that we, as a community, are comfortable with and want them to run for us. It’s not their system. They are the managers of it, but it’s our system. I am definitely interested in transforming the way we prepare people. Not in little increments, but in a very, broad systematic way.”
Q: Mayor [John] Delaney told us that when he ran in 1995 the top two issues were crime and education. He says that crime is now off the radar and education is number one. That was eight years ago and we are still talking about education. Why are we still talking about it?
A: Because we haven’t had a community ownership of the challenge. We have made incremental opportunities. It’s a mentoring program and this school or money for a different school. That’s not how you fix a very long and complicated system. This has to be from the ground, up. It has to be systematic. It’s a disservice to try to put within a large system an adjustment at one place and not know how it impacts the whole system and not know the results and ramifications of it. It’s a difference between incremental benefits and transformation. I’ve worked for mayors, I was chief of staff for Ed Austin and Mayor John Delaney, and they chose — and there’s a logic to their choice — that they not get all that involved in the education system.
Q: You have to now, though.
A: Only if you want to have the best that we possibly can. The next mayor doesn’t have to. The next mayor can do what’s been done in the past and that is, basically, as an outsider, try to help. Or, the next mayor can say, ‘I’m not the outsider. It’s our system. The School Board, you’re working for us.’ You know, the School Board works for the community. It’s not something we just get the results from. They work for us. A mayor can make a huge difference, but only if you get the community behind you. We don’t have legal authority. The only way a mayor can make major adjustments is to galvanize the community in support if whatever it is they are trying accomplish. He can’t do it alone. You don’t have the authority to do it alone, so it’s an effort that has to be community-wide. We’ve had federal courts and we’ve had state legislators and we’ve had school boards tell us, as a community, where our school system is and should be. I think it’s time we take that in reverse and the community tell the School Board what it is our system should be. And then they go out and build it and maintain it. It’s whether we take ownership. We got our consolidated government because the community really stepped up. We did the Better Jacksonville Plan because the community stepped up. We got the Jaguars and the Super Bowl. This is sort of a defining moment and our school system, our preparation system for work, won’t be the best in the country unless the community as a whole steps in and says, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’ If that’s going to happen, the mayor is going to help make it happen.
Q: Should the School Board be elected or appointed?
A: I think the School Board should be what’s best to accomplish our school system. I don’t think the School Board has failed us because we as a community have never given them a set of expectations. We have never given them goals. We’ve never done anything but occasionally complain. Our community, as well as almost all in the country, haven’t stepped up and said this is what we want. Now, if we do that and they don’t perform, then I’ll talk about all kinds of variations of what could be better. I wouldn’t discuss any variation of what we have until we give them an opportunity to perform up to our expectations and I’ve been here 26 years and I don’t think that’s ever been done. It’s a major adjustment to the way things have been here. It’s a decision of what we want. Do we want incremental improvements or do we want to really run to the top and that’s to build the best. If we want to build the best, there has to got to be major changes, major systematic changes or else we’ll continue very much the way we are.
Q: Talk a little bit about Betty Holzendorf’s last minute entry into the race and how that impacts you.
A: I think anybody in and out [of the race] has an impact on the others. But no one has a tremendous impact. I’ve been very pleased with the support I’ve received from all segments of the community. As a Republican, I’ve been very pleased with the reception I’ve been given by the African-American community. Remember, I’ve got 26 years of relations and doing things in this community and I’ve been very pleased with that. Both the sheriff [Nat Glover] and Betty in the race make that a more difficult challenge. Nonetheless, I feel at the end of the day we are going to show a lot of support in all areas of the community.
Q: Are you and John Peyton just campaigning, or is there a little bit of true dislike?
A: I don’t think there’s any dislike. John and I share the challenge of being non-elected [before] and it’s a challenge in this race with so much experience of getting successfully elected. We both have a hill to climb and as the community gets to know us both better, hopefully they will make the right decision. There are times in a community’s history where a ‘throw the bums out’ campaign works; where there is a lot of corruption and dissatisfaction with what’s going on. And, we’ve had that in our community. There’s also times, like we have today, when most people are very comfortable with what we’ve been doing over the last 8-10 years. It’s not a time to throw the bums out. John comes in without real extensive experience in running agencies, in running government, and I do. He calls me the bureaucrat and he comes in with the tool box. Again, I think that works at certain times in a community’s history, but I don’t think the community is looking for major changes in the direction. Improvements? Yes. Building upon what we’ve been doing? Yes. Major changes in direction? I don’t think this is the right time.
Q: At this point you have been in the race longer than anyone else. Are you out of gas yet?
A: No. It tends to be different people every day. This is such a big community that, as routine as it sometimes feels for us [the candidates], it’s not routine for those coming to listen to us. I’m feeling very good. There’s a buzz and people are starting to realize I’m pretty prepared for this job.
Q: Excluding education, if you make it to the mayor’s office, what’s the first order of business?
A: Super Bowl. I would probably make sure the city is ready to do all things that should be done to make the Super Bowl come off the way it should. The Super Bowl is an opportunity for us to present ourself to the world and help get those jobs and help recruit those new opportunities. I would focus immediately on education, which is economic development, and also security.