Here’s a bit of irony.
In the recent mayoral election, the Republican Party did heroic work in driving Republicans to the polls.
The overall turnout was 33 percent. The Republican turnout was 43 percent.
But way too many of the Republicans voted for the opposition.
Republicans are outnumbered by Democrats, although they are gaining.
When the tallying was done, Democrat Donna Deegan had garnered 52 percent of the vote.
Eye on Jacksonville looked at the precinct totals. Deegan won by almost 4-to-1 in the precincts where voters with black skin are the vast majority. Since those votes usually show 90 percent support for Democrats — which is one of the great political mysteries of our time – that is not too surprising.
That is confirmed by the fact that Deegan got an astounding 95 percent of the vote in precincts where Democrats are the vast majority.
The two candidates had a dead heat in precincts where neither party prevails.
In heavily Republican precincts, Davis got two-thirds of the votes. Not bad, but nowhere near the party unity shown by Democrats.
Pretty much every analysis has concluded that the mudslinging during the primary hurt the Republican brand. Davis had only two weeks after that to catch up before voting began again.
He spent $3 million while Deegan was spending $2 million but as someone noted, Deegan had a name and face recognition advantage that was worth $3 million.
Another takeaway is that the surge of Republican votes may have negated the recent liberal Democrat victory in the courts. A lawsuit was filed that challenged the City Council redistricting and a liberal judge agreed to replace the efforts of the city’s elected leaders with maps drawn by liberal Democrats that were designed to get more Democrats elected.
How did it work out? Democrats added one more from their party to the council. But they lost one lately so there is no net gain.
Republicans still enjoy a council supermajority, at least one based on registrations.
That means Deegan should have a hard time getting liberal legislation passed, if the council members vote on party principles.
But this will be mostly the same council that voted for the so-called “human rights” ordinance so how it will play out in the real world remains to be seen.
