Two Big Thumpings for the GOP
Several elections around the country were held yesterday, and the news was pretty awful for the GOP in two races in particular, signaling trouble ahead for Republicans in 2024.
In the heart of GOP territory—in Jacksonville, Florida—the Democratic mayoral candidate, Donna Deegan, defeated the Republican contender by four points—even though he had outspent her four to one.
And in traditionally conservative Colorado Springs, Colorado, a political newcomer and immigrant from West Africa, Yemi Mobolade, who ran as an unaffiliated candidate, trounced the GOP challenger to become that city’s new mayor elect.
Today, we’ll look at these races more closely and then draw some observations about what they portend for the critical 2024 election cycle and more broadly for the country and its demographic shifts.
But before we do, we should all pause, close our eyes, take a breath and smile—because the news is pretty darn encouraging.
A huge upset in Jacksonville
If you’re like most Americans, the question of who just won the mayor’s race in Jacksonville, Florida, wouldn’t register near the top of your questions. But political observers from both sides of the political spectrum saw the final results on Tuesday and fairly gasped.
After all, Florida has shifted so far to the right lately that all hope seemed lost there for the Democratic Party, especially after its trouncing during the 2022 midterms. While most of the rest of the nation hit pause on extremism, Florida went all-in on the GOP and Ron DeSantis. That’s why an unexpected win by the Democrat in Jacksonville, especially during an off-cycle election, is reverberating throughout political circles.
Former TV anchor Donna Deegan defeated her opponent, JAX Chamber CEO Daniel Davis, by a vote of 52 to 48 percent, becoming the first woman ever to win the mayorship in Jacksonville. Deegan is also an Arab American and a member of the Hazouri family, which is prominent in the city’s Arab community.
Deegan campaigned on a platform of being a changemaker and on bringing the city together. “Love won today,” she told a crowd at her watch party on Tuesday night, emphasizing her politics of unity over division.
Her opponent, Daniel Davis, had trotted out the usual attacks, warning that a win by Deegan would turn Jacksonville into the “murder capital of Florida”—glossing over the fact that murders have already risen sharply in Jacksonville over the past eight years with current rates far higher than New York City, Seattle, San Francisco and Austin. Deegan held to her priorities during the campaign, pledging to nurture small businesses downtown while funding crime prevention programs.
The GOP candidate also attempted to lean into the culture wars, earning an endorsement from Gov. Ron DeSantis. In early May, avoiding a debate he had been invited to attend against Deegan, Davis held a town hall on the topics of parents' rights, safe neighborhoods and school choice. Afterward, Davis promised to sign a pledge advanced by “Moms for Liberty,” an anti-LGBTQ group that seeks to protect the “fundamental rights of parents” on such matters of education, medical care and “moral upbringing of their children.”
But the politics of division didn’t win the day yesterday in Florida. Deegan’s more inclusive message, which she delivered from a positive campaign, resonated more deeply with voters in the city.
I should also add that Jacksonville is no small city. As historian Kevin Kruse noted, it is the 12th largest city in America and has been represented by a Republican mayor for almost all of the last 30 years, with the single exception of a Democratic mayor from 2011-2015.
One big caveat: The Democratic base didn’t carry the day in Jacksonville for Deegan. In fact, while Democrats had a lead in early voter turnout going into Election Day, by 4 pm that had flipped and registered Republicans had nearly a 4,300-vote edge. Most observers believed this meant the GOP candidate would easily take the race. And indeed, by the time polls closed, turnout among Democrats was far lower than Republicans, by over 3 points.
So how did Deegan win? By running what’s called a “persuasion” campaign. That means going out and winning over middle-of-the-road independents and even Republican crossover voters. The numbers were so impressive that they had number crunchers and election prognosticators, who had seen the turnout numbers and pegged the race as an easy GOP hold, performing mea culpas and eating crow.
The takeaway is Deegan won despite lackluster turnout from Democrats. While it’s understandable that the party feels dispirited in Florida after 2022 and DeSantis’s nonstop attacks, this win could inject new life into the fight to keep Florida from toppling forever into the red column. Simply put, if Florida Democrats can become reenergized and join with persuadable voters to push back against extremism in the state, they can form a winning coalition. Deegan just proved that.
Spring blooms in Colorado Springs
It’s being called a “political earthquake” in Colorado Springs. The GOP mayoral candidate not only lost to newcomer Yemi Mobolade, he was routed by over 14 points.
I want to repeat, this was in Colorado Springs.
That city has historically been considered a bastion of conservatism and a longtime stronghold of the GOP, known for being the home of the extremist group Focus on the Family, of military families, and of evangelical migrants. It has even earned the nickname “God’s City” by some.
But the city has been growing rapidly, and it is set to become the largest city in Colorado by 2050. As the Colorado Sun observed,
Just a few years ago it would be hard to imagine someone other than a Republican leading the city. But cracks in Colorado Springs’ GOP streak have shown in recent years. In the November election, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis came within 4 percentage points of his GOP challenger, University of Colorado Regent Heidi Ganahl, in El Paso County. Several Democrats won state legislative seats in and around the city.
The mayor-elect makes for an improbable political success story, at least on the surface. An immigrant from Nigeria, Mobolade—or “Yemi” as his supporters call him—was running to become the first Black elected mayor in a historically conservative GOP fortress. A tall order, indeed.
But Mobolade built his reputation methodically. After moving to Colorado Springs in 2010, he founded two popular restaurants—The Wild Goose Meeting House and Good Neighbors Meeting House—and served as the city’s small business administrator. He was also a VP for business retention and expansion for the local chamber and a proponent of economic development.
Another key fact: Unlike his opponent, who outraised and outspent him using outside PAC money, Mobolade raised most of his funds from grassroot small donors. His average contribution was about $440, compared with nearly $3,160 for his opponent.
Key takeaways
According to Daniel Nichanian, the editor-in-chief of the political Bolts magazine, until this election Jacksonville was the most populous city in America governed by a Republican. “To answer the obvious question, the most populous city with a Republican mayor will now be...Fort Worth, Texas,” Nichanian noted.
For its part, Colorado Springs was the seventh largest city in America under GOP control until yesterday. Tuesday’s elections knocked two top-ten urban jewels off the GOP crown and into the laps of the Democrats.
The wins signal that Democratic control of America’s big cities is nearly complete. But what does that mean in a broader sense?
In the pluralistic future represented by America’s major urban areas, Democrats will continue to dominate, while the GOP holds fast to the less-populated, rural parts of the nation. That is not surprising, but it’s important to understand that this doesn’t just mean Democrats will control the usual big city names. The centers now include places such as Jacksonville and Colorado Springs, along with scores of other growing towns and cities.
It also means the urban/rural divide—cultural, economic, social—is likely to expand, not shrink. We will see more blue circles and dots in a sea of red on the map. This has big implications for how to arrive at fair representation, especially because Democrats can more easily get packed into gerrymandered districts that contain big urban centers.
Increasingly, we will also see state legislatures, especially in heavily GOP-denominated states, seek to exert control over their own big cities. Recent efforts include the state-level Texas takeover of Houston’s schools and election system and the state-level management and control of Jackson, Mississippi. There are serious racial overtones with each of these moves, with largely white state legislatures overriding local minority control.
More immediately for 2024, however, the wins represent a crisis for the GOP. Both candidates in these citywide races brought together coalitions of voters, many of whom were willing to cross over to vote against the GOP contender, echoing what happened in 2022 in key battleground states. Many of these voters feel exhausted by the negativity and extremism of the GOP, and they want more inclusive, forward-looking options.
If that trend continues, it will cost the Republicans the House and the White House in 2024. And if Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown can hold out in Montana and Ohio—or if Colin Allred can somehow leverage it to unseat Ted Cruz in Texas, it could even keep the Senate in Democratic hands, despite a very tough map.
Hey, a fella can hope.
Speaking of hope, Jacksonville in particular was a test for the politics of grievance against the politics of hope, and the GOP failed it badly. Democratic candidates take note: Persuasion campaigns, especially in an era where women are rapidly losing the once guaranteed right to abortion, are an important blueprint for victory for centrist candidates in 2024.
And this holds true even in otherwise hard-to-win places.
Although certainly not a major metropolis by any stretch, Lincoln, NE, Capitol of deeply red Nebraska, re-elected its Democrat mayor a few weeks ago. Her opponent ran a divisive campaign, touting the current MAGA line, and lost. Lincoln has always been a bit more left leaning because the University is there, but still a nice little blue dot in a sea of red.
Independent voters (thinkers from all persuasions/ parties) are core to protecting democracy. Before Trump, I would vote for who I believed was the best candidate, regardless of party. Now, I only vote Democratic. It was very weird, in fact, to check the "party line" box on my ballot after 35 years of voting "best person."