It was sad to see former mayor Alvin Brown play the race card, especially against President Donald Trump.
Brown claims, without a shred of credible evidence, that he was removed from the National Transportation Safety Board by Trump because Trump doesn’t like the color of Brown’s skin, which is black.
Truth is, Brown likely would not have been mayor of Jacksonville, but for the color of his skin.
His opponent in the mayor’s race of 2011 was Mike Hogan, a former city councilman and state representative who was far more qualified. Brown never had worked in government except for some obscure posts in the federal bureaucracy.
But Democrats insisted that it was essential for Jacksonville to have a mayor with black skin. Because.
It’s the same irrational thinking Jacksonville voters heard three years ago: “We are deficient, because we never have had a woman mayor.”
Eight years earlier a Democrat with black skin had run for mayor and lost. That Democrat was more qualified than Brown, but the voters still preferred the Republican candidate, who was John Peyton, a novice politician but an astute businessman. The Democrat, Nat Glover, didn’t help his own case when he suggested that Peyton was using race in his campaign.
Hogan made it abundantly clear he was not going to tax and spend at the level liberals prefer. Local business leaders like to “invest” Other People’s Money in screwy ideas like the Emerald Trail, and some of those businessmen are registered Republican who don’t really care much about conservative principles, so Hogan faced a problem.
Brown won — and then a funny thing happened.
Brown didn’t really go along with the tax and spend program. His support from businessmen evaporated. After one term he lost to Republican Lenny Curry. (That’s a whole ‘nother story.)
Suffice to say, without Big Business backing — Brown lost to Curry by some 5,000 votes.
While Joe Biden was president (more or less) Brown returned to the Deep State by getting appointed to the NTSB in 2024. After being removed last May, he filed a suit alleging discrimination.
The suit claims: “Mr. Brown was the only Black member of the NTSB. Mr. Brown was removed as opposed to similarly situated members of the Board in part because of his race.”
The evidence of discrimination presented by the left wing organization that filed the suit, Democracy Forward, included this accusation: “President Trump’s claim on April 26, 2025, that he ‘ended all of the lawless so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion bullshit all across the entire federal government and the private sector.’”
Brown’s one term as mayor was marked by few missteps and healthy post-recession growth in the private sector. So, Brown had a pretty good place in local political history. But by going to the gutter after losing his cushy job he earned a blemish that might easily have been avoided.
As the brilliant economist Thomas Sowell said, “The word ‘racism’ is like ketchup. It can be put on practically anything – and demanding evidence makes you a ‘racist.’”
