by Mike Sharkey
Staff Writer
It’s been well over a decade since members of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce sat down with incumbents and candidates for office and gave them a good grilling.
That will change this fall.
The Chamber has created Jax Biz Inc., a Committee for Continuing Existence. The 15-member, non-partisan group of Chamber committee chairs and at-large members will interview candidates for office starting with this fall’s Duval County School Board elections.
“We will start the interviews in late summer,” said Chamber Chair Ed Burr, who’s also the CEO of LandMar.
Burr said the CCE is a modern version of Jax PAC, a similar group that dissolved in the late 1980s because it was no longer effective.
“They were endorsing the same people over and over,” said Burr, pointing out that there’s a different political landscape in Jacksonville. The Chamber is much larger — it now encompasses seven counties — and voter-approved term limits have created a natural turnover among the legislative branch, specifically the School Board and City Council.
“What makes this effective is term limits,” said Burr. “Every four years there is a lot of turnover.”
Burr explained the idea behind CCE is to bring incumbents and candidates in for formal interviews in an effort to gauge where they stand in relation to the Chamber’s ideologies regarding the business climate in Jacksonville. The interviews will be conducted in a forum-like setting with the CCE moderating each session.
“The candidates will be trying to earn our endorsement,” said Burr, adding that endorsement could prove valuable at the polls. “We have 4,000 members and that represents tens of thousands of votes.”
Burr stressed the CCE will only interview and endorse candidates; it will not contribute financially to anyone’s coffers or their political party.
While the endorsement of the CCE may help a candidate win an office or an incumbent keep their job, it doesn’t guarantee job security. Like the state Chamber, the CCE will periodically hand out report cards.
“We will let the electorate know how their legislators have done based on how they ran their campaign,” said Burr.