Two years after he left City Hall, former mayor Lenny Curry is jumping back into Jacksonville’s political arena on an issue that puts him in direct opposition to Mayor Donna Deegan.
Curry has written a guest column for the Florida Times-Union, appeared on “This Week in the 904” on Action News, called into the First Coast Connect radio talk show and used his X account for a steady stream of posts supporting the push by City Council President Kevin Carrico to get enough votes on City Council for a 1.1% cut in the millage rate for property taxes.
When he was mayor, Curry said former mayors should simply move on after their time in office ends. But he said he’s going to weigh in when he believes a city-related issue is important. For property taxes, he said the millage rate cut proposed by the council’s Finance Committee should be the “beginning of relief that needs to continue” in future budgets as well.
“That’s my view, and if I were mayor, I would support this tax cut and I would support one next year and others in the years ahead,” he said in a Times-Union interview.
In making case for a millage rate cut, Curry has drawn comparisons between his own tenure as mayor and Deegan.
University of North Florida political science professor Michael Binder said that could fuel political speculation Curry is warming up a possible run for mayor.
“I think the palace intrigue, if you will, is now that he’s getting engaged and the Republicans are really struggling to field a quality candidate for the mayor’s race in 2027, is Curry going to try something like that?” Binder said.
Binder said he would be surprised but not shocked if Curry does seek a return to the mayor’s office. Term limits prevented Curry from running in 2023 for a third straight term, but it doesn’t stop another run after being out of office.
Asked whether he might run for mayor, Curry noted his success at the polls when he won election in 2015 and re-election in 2019, plus a successful voter referendum in 2016 for extending a half-cent sales tax to pay down the city’s huge pension debt.
“But no, I’m not running for mayor,” Curry said.
He said he will weigh in “very carefully, very selectively” on specific issues such as property taxes.
“I cut property taxes before I left office,” he said. “We are now in a situation where people — real people on the street, average people — are feeling real pain with groceries and gas and cost of living. It’s very difficult times and I think property tax relief is really important.”
Deegan: Curry ‘continues to divide and distract’
After Curry left City Hall at the end of June 2023, he joined Ballard Partners as a partner working out of the lobbying firm’s offices in Jacksonville, Tallahassee and Washington, where he has connections to members of President Donald Trump’s staff.
He also has longstanding relationships with state elected leaders from his time as mayor and as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida before he became a candidate himself.
“I would say I’ve not been as absent as people might think,” Curry said of the past two years. “I just haven’t been publicly weighing in. I’ve been very active in Tallahassee, active in D.C.”
He commended Deegan a year ago for the city’s stadium renovation agreement with the Jaguars that will keep the team playing in Jacksonville. But his criticism of her opposition to the millage rate cut proposed by the council’s Finance Committee has demonstrated the distance between them as he’s called her position elitist and tone-deaf.
Deegan, a Democrat, says Curry is the exception to the relationships she has with other past mayors of both political parties.
On the Republican side, John Delaney was a co-chair of Deegan’s transition committee after she won election. John Peyton joined Deegan in July at City Hall for an announcement about his family’s Gate Foundation donating $1 million to expand the Mayor’s Book Club, a literacy program he launched when he was mayor and Deegan has emphasized with her River City Readers.
Peyton’s family-owned business Gate Petroleum contributed $5,000 to Deegan’s political committee.
Former mayor Alvin Brown and Deegan are both Democrats.
“I’m grateful for the relationships I have with every other former living mayor, and I value their guidance,” Deegan said in a statement. “Jacksonville has real momentum right now. It’s disappointing that my predecessor continues to divide and distract from the work to continue that progress.”
“It’s my belief that love for city is more important than loyalty to a political party,” Deegan said. “Jacksonville can be a world-class city if we all work together.”
Curry faced criticism as mayor from former mayor Godbold
While it’s rare for a past mayor to take a public stance against the current mayor, it’s not unprecedented.
Curry was on the receiving end when he was mayor and former mayor Jake Godbold spoke out repeatedly against the attempted sale of JEA while Curry supported the utility seeking offers for it in 2019.
Godbold’s opposition took the form of a full-page ad in the Times-Union addressed to City Council members. Godbold and Curry both spoke at a City Council workshop in November 2019 about the potential JEA sale.
Curry later wrote in a tweet about former mayors returning to City Hall, “When your time is up. It’s up. I’ll abide by that when my time’s up. It’s good form and nobody cares when you’re gone.”
When First Coast Connect host Anne Schindler read that tweet during an Aug. 29 media roundtable segment, Curry called in to the radio talk show.
“Look, if there’s a policy issue that I feel serious about, I’m going to weigh in and this is one of them,” he said.
He said “people are looking for relief. Politicians that don’t see what’s coming right now on economic pain are going to suffer at the polls and be thrown out of office.”
Curry’s record on taxes during his time as mayor
Curry’s own record on taxes encompasses one tax cut, one tax increase and one extension of an existing tax.
The extension was for the half-cent sales tax for the Better Jacksonville Plan that will continue in 2031 as a half-cent sales tax for paying off the city’s pension debt that had been crippling city finances. Curry won 65% approval for that in a 2016 voter referendum.
The tax increase came when Curry convinced City Council in 2021 to double the local gas tax to 12 cents per gallon from 6 cents per gallon for a long list of transportation projects.
The tax cut happened in 2022 when the council supported a 1.1% cut in the millage rate he proposed for the 2022-23 budget.
Curry said the half-cent sales tax extension and the gas tax are both tied to specific purposes. He said property taxes don’t have that constraint and can become a “piggy bank for local government to just spend your money how they want to.”
Deegan has used the same millage rate for her budgets that Curry used in his final budget. The City Council Finance Committee proposed a 1.1% millage rate cut that mirrors the amount of the cut enacted three years ago.
Curry said opposition to cutting the millage rate comes from “chamber of commerce types” who aren’t experiencing financial worries.
When he was in office, JAX Chamber publicly supported him on both the half-cent sales tax referendum and on doubling the gas tax. But Curry said in terms of property taxes, it’s not a group that understands what’s at stake for people struggling to pay bills.
“Many of the people that advocate for either tax increases or not cutting taxes have lived in a social bubble for decades,” he said. “They go to cocktail parties, they go to dinner parties where everybody’s getting along and everybody’s doing well and nobody’s feeling any financial pain. That’s not the real world.”
Curry’s connections to City Council run deep
Deegan has said the push for cutting the tax rate is rooted in politics. She has repeatedly pointed out that for the owner of a $200,000 home with a homestead exemption, the millage rate cut will lower that homeowner’s annual tax bill by about $19 a year or “a little more than $1 month” compared to keeping the same millage rate as she proposes.
And Deegan has said that roughly half of the city’s residents are renters so they won’t get any benefit from a millage rate cut.
She said when residents see what the actual impact of the tax rate would be, they tell her they’d rather see the city stick with the current rate and use the money to improve Jacksonville’s quality of life and build on its momentum.
Binder, who directs the University of North Florida’s Public Opinion Research Lab, said it’s “politics 101” that local Republicans are following the lead of Gov. Ron DeSantis in talking about cutting property taxes when residents are frustrated about the rising cost of owning a home.
“It’s an exceptionally real problem that people face with housing costs in this state,” he said.
But he said he doubts the millage rate cut put forward by the Finance Committee is big enough to move the needle politically “when the cost of coffee has doubled.”
Curry said he’s spoken to City Council members about doing another property tax rate cut next year. He is close with many members of the Republican-controlled council, including Carrico who joined council in 2020 when Curry still was mayor.
Carrico said Curry and his top staff in the mayor’s office taught him how to navigate City Hall when he was a political rookie and he still trusts them as sounding boards.
“They’re people that I lean on and still communicate with on a regular basis,” Carrico said.
He said in regard to the millage rate cut, he decided to make that part of this year’s budget process. Curry “gave me encouragement on that, not the strategy,” Carrico said.
He said city leaders should consider more millage rate cuts in the future. “Every budget year is different, but if we can, absolutely,” he said.
Curry said he thinks the current tax rate cut is resonating with residents and should be continued with more rate cuts.
“That’s not just populism,” he said. “That’s reality.”
He made increases in city taxes and fees a campaign issue when he ran for mayor in 2015. He said he hears the same discontent today as people have been dealing in recent years with rising costs for groceries, insurance and eating out.
“It’s just non-stop and government has only so many levers it can pull,” he said. “Property tax is a lever that can give people rare relief and I think this is just the beginning of relief.”
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: What’s next for Lenny Curry? Former mayor returns to public eye with tax cut statements
Reporting by David Bauerlein, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union / Florida Times-Union
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
