People Don’t Like It

The Miami Herald carries the first results of GOP efforts: In Jacksonville mayoral loss, lessons for Florida GOP

Republican leaders said over and over in recent weeks that a race for mayor of Jacksonville amounted to the first big Florida fight in the 2012 presidential race.

“The liberal organizers who want to keep the American people enslaved by wasteful spending and hideous deficits need to know that they have jumped the gun on 2012 and have awakened a sleeping giant,” Duval County Republican Chairman Lenny Curry declared this month before handing a $50,000 check to Republican mayoral candidate Mike Hogan.

“We’re going to send a message that Florida is red.”

Republicans better hope Curry is wrong about the Jacksonville race being a harbinger, because an black Democrat named Alvin Brown this week was elected mayor of Florida’s largest county, which includes the city of Jacksoville. Across Florida and even the country, stunned Republicans are struggling to understand the narrow upset in conservative northeast Florida.

“Jacksonville has always been a conservative stronghold for Republicans, and we’re going to have to really study what happened in this race,” said Florida Senate president and U.S. Senate candidate Mike Haridopolos, who had expected Hogan to win handily.

Here’s a hint for Mike Haridopolos – people saw what you wanted to do, and they don’t like it. For a Democrat to win in Duval County, Republicans had to vote for him. Duval is as “Red” as the Panhandle, and unless there’s only a 10% turnout, you can’t win with just non-Republican voters.

Here’s another hint – a lot of the people who are registered Republicans in Florida are real conservatives, and they don’t like the radical agenda of the current GOP.