Delaney Responds To Pathetic Attack

[fieldafm]

Good for President Delaney for sticking up for himself.

http://jacksonville.com/business/columnists/2015-05-18/story/guest-column-delaney-defends-his-record-mayor

[fieldafm]

Vote for and support who you want.

Lobbing personal attacks at someone for voting for a candidate you don't prefer is pretty pathetic. Attacking a mayor from 15 years ago instead of extolling the virtues of the last 4 years of your preferred candidate is at best, weak.

BTW, Delaney is also a lawyer (of the 'non-tort kind').

[Tacachale]

Hogan said a lot worse than that in his piece. At least tort lawyer is true.

[Steve]

Amen-I disagree with Delaney on his endorsement, but definitely not on his character and integrity.

[TheCat]

Vote for and support who you want.

Lobbing personal attacks at someone for voting for a candidate you don't prefer is pretty pathetic. Attacking a mayor from 15 years ago instead of extolling the virtues of the last 4 years of your preferred candidate is at best, weak.

BTW, Delaney is also a lawyer (of the 'non-tort kind').

I haven't read Hogan's letter. It may be below the belt, which would not be cool.

BUT

"Attacking a mayor from 15 years ago"

What ? It's not like Delaney was drinking coffee and reading Les Miserables, then, out of the blue, he was attacked. Delaney is making his rounds endorsing Curry.

If Delaney is  blaming Brown for our pension issues (which he is) and our murder numbers (which he is); yeah, you have to question his administration. Delaney created the 30 year pension deal. He's a part of the issue.

The violent crime rate was WAY higher under Delaney, around 1000 violent instances per 100k people. Under Brown, the violent crime rate is around 630 per 100k. Under his administration, with more police, we had higher crime across the board. Yet, he's attacking Brown on crime.

[Tacachale]

Yes, a lot of Hogan's letter was below the belt. And it contained a lot of attacks on the old man that had nothing to do with any current election issue, even where they weren't false on their face. It was an attempt to shift the focus away from a discussion of Brown, and Curry for that matter, to items of no current consequence.

Neither piece mentioned crime so far as I recall. I'll respond to your crime article today in its own thread.

[TheCat]

Guest column: Will Curry be like Delaney?
By Wayne Hogan Fri, May 15, 2015 @ 5:06 pm | updated Fri, May 15, 2015 @ 5:13 pm

When the Alabama Constitution disqualified Gov. George Wallace from running in 1966, his wife Lurleen said she would run and, if elected, "let George do it."
It looks like Lenny Curry may have found his "George."

Among the daily Curry attack mail pieces, one stood out last week. It seemed to be a letter from a former mayor and public university president.

UNF has a conduct code on partisan politics and I have contributed to UNF programs, so I wanted to tell UNF president John Delaney that political operatives had used his signature and picture.

But when I heard him call WJCT's First Coast Connect, it became clear that raw partisan politics had lured him from his UNF chambers to parrot the Republican Party line and lecture Mayor Alvin Brown on how to be mayor.

Delaney became mayor two decades ago, and many may know him only as the smiling fundraising face of UNF. Some voters may be influenced by his comments. But his mayoral mistakes and habit of kicking the can down the road on city finances and operations are public record, so it's surprising he would put it all back on display by attacking Brown.

I did a simple online news search to refresh my recollection; here are some items for voters to consider:

■ On city pensions, it was Delaney who bound the city to a 30-agreement recently held illegal for violating the Sunshine Law. Delaney flip-flops on that today and says it was not really for 30 years, but the fact is it pushed the city into an unsustainable set of pension benefits. Still, he criticizes Brown for taking on the thankless task of cleaning up the pension mess Delaney negotiated.

■ On fiscal responsibility, a grand jury investigated Delaney's failed $40 million deal on the Shipyards property and found his administration waffled between lax monitoring and gross negligence. And Delaney promised voters a $190 million Duval County Courthouse project, but he left his successors a project that mushroomed to $350 million and took more than 10 years to complete. Yet he now criticizes city finances under Brown.

■ On management, a June 2001 Times-Union investigation found fire inspectors "loafing" and records in "shambles" six years into Delaney's tenure. He had to essentially fire many of them and start over. Yet he now criticizes Brown's management style.

Plainly, a former mayor who in his time benefitted from a booming U.S. economy is in no position to lecture anyone on how to run a city saddled with troubles he himself created. Yet Delaney's partisanship leads him to shovel negative attacks at Brown, who has worked hard to get us out of holes Delaney himself dug.

Learning at Delaney's knee, Curry has crawfished on pensions. First, he touted "the reform plan that Mayor John Peyton developed," but the hard truth is that plan was never a viable option. Former City Council President Bill Bishop stated, "The plan that was put forth under Mayor Peyton, the council in no way was going to pass that proposal, which is why it never passed in the first place. It didn't go far enough and it wasn't going to work."

Proven wrong, Curry sent a piece of mail that reveals his flip-flop.

It says his new "plan" is essentially to check behind the city's sofa cushions for loose change and attend "public meetings to discuss where each side can make necessary sacrifices."

Curry has every right to market Delaney's endorsement. But he should explain how he plans to avoid being another Delaney. Voters deserve to know whether Curry will be his own man or just "let John do it."

Wayne Hogan is a Jacksonville attorney.

http://jacksonville.com/business/columnists/2015-05-15/story/guest-column-will-curry-be-delaney

This is the letter?

[TheCat]

Tacachale, I saw your response on the crime piece. I'm going through the numbers.

[simms3]

I actually see nothing terribly wrong with this.  Delaney was certainly more visionary and more likable than the past two mayors, but as I was too young to understand fully at the time, it sounds like he was not without his own mistakes, and perhaps some of these mistakes are what Brown is dealing with (or not actually dealing with) today.  If Delaney is making the same points as the TU and yet Brown's weak points are coincidentally his inability to deal with legacy issues created at least in part under Delaney's former leadership, then Delaney deserves to have someone call him out for this.

I am interpreting Wayne's piece as calling out some hypocrisies or inconsistencies with Delaney's administration in an attempt to discredit his public endorsement of Curry.  I am so on the fence of who I would vote for if I were a citizen of Jax and have waffled in my own mind of 4 more years of Brown or 4-8 years of Curry, neither exciting me, but there is nothing out of the ordinary with this tactic.  I am not offended.  I am not walking away hating Delaney and wanting to vote for Brown, and I am not walking away hating Brown's side for this "unsolicited low blow" and going to support Curry.  Still pretty neutral.

Wayne Hogan is a public figure.  Delaney is a public figure.  This isn't even a bad spar.  This is par for the course, frankly.  People have been far worse to each other on this forum, on a daily basis.

[Know Growth]

Delaney's personal work schedule obviously affords the ability to spontaneously call in to First Coast Connect.

(and mine is similar.......we're both Puds)