Joining me on this episode is local writer, journalist, entrepreneur and consultant, Stephen Dare’
The current political climate and Jacksonville Mayoral Race – Stephen Dare – Season 4 – Episode 6
Stephen Dare is a writer, restauranteur, chef, arts and civic advocate with a background in urban development, planning, neighborhood revitalization and pure old fashioned Southern gossip.
Here is just some of our conversation:
Tracy Rigdon: “Duval County is going through several elections coming up, not only the mayoral, you know, but there is also some city council seats left to be filled. But right off the bat, Before we, I wanted to talk about the mayoral candidates, Davis and Deegan. And I thought that our listeners here should know right off the bat too, that you yourself are actively involved in the Donna Deegan for Mayor campaign. Is that correct?”
Stephen Dare: “Oh, absolutely and proudly.”
Tracy Rigdon: “… I have indeed run into people on the street and people that I know in Clay County, which is really a red county for sure. Register Republicans that always vote party lines. They’re even saying that they believe in their hearts that Donna is the best pick for the job for Duval County.”
Stephen Dare: “Yeah, well, I mean, you know, I’m going to give you my objective opinion objective from my point of view, right?” “So I’ve known Dan Davis for 20 years, actually, 23 years now.” … “But, you know. And just looking at the candidates, he doesn’t have the intellectual curiosity that’s necessary to run a city like Jacksonville at an inflection point. And make no doubt about it. The country, the state, the city, all of them are at inflection points. And you know, for me, I originally backed Matt Carlucci, who is also a very old friend and someone I love and admire and respect.” “…She got breast cancer three times, as most people know. And the third time, I don’t think that she felt like she was gonna survive it. Like she slept with death every night and death was her expectation. And for whatever reason, um, and be the miracle of, you know, medicine and like being healthy underneath. She survived that and it was a crucible for her. Um, like it kind of changed what she was willing to put up with things that she was not willing to waste her time on anymore.”
Stephen also works on a consulting basis for the ‘Donna Deegan for Mayor’ campaign in Jacksonville, Florida.
Stephen Dare: “And then the work with the foundation has taken her into the lives of, you know, because cancer doesn’t care what color you are and doesn’t care how much money you have.”…”19,000 women have been able to get through their bills and through cancer because, you know, she does these races and she wasn’t content with simply surviving cancer. She wanted other people to.” “And every conversation I’ve had with her and We’ve had hundreds over the past year. I’m always amazed by the depth of her curiosity. And it’s what we need right now. Tracy, as you know, last time we sat and talked, we just talked about technological changes that are happening in our society. And now this is a time where we really have to worry about who we are as a country. Do we respect women? Do we want to move forward? Are we making the right decisions for a technological economy of the future? Are we making the right ethical decisions? And, you know, who do you know in this area that is even thinking about that? In politics.”
Stephen appeared on the Contrast Project in Seasons One and Two.
Tracy Rigdon: “… what would you say about that as far as Duval County goes, Jacksonville, other big cities? How they compare with their infrastructure and how they approach it.”
Stephen Dare: “Well, you know, so as you know, I’ve I’ve been closely involved with those conversations over the past 25 years. And I first started getting involved in like, city projects back in 1988, I think, was, it’s been 40 years of watching this process. And Tracy, I’m going to tell you, like, most of those things that you hear about never intended to complete. They were just ways of like raising money. And I’m serious, they were just ways of raising money that would disappear later. And, you know, we’ve had 40 years of Republican rule and the past 20 years of it have been corrupt as shit.”
“…no intention except to get power and to make money off of it. And you can tell, and not since the Delaney administration, has there been a lick of integrity in the system. And you’ve seen nothing happen as a result of it. You know, just simple things like downtowns that other cities are able to do. Charlotte surpassed us on their downtown. Greenville, North Carolina surpassed us in their downtown.”
“You know, sorry, what does it take when, you know, we’re the 13th largest city in the country, and it’s not just our peer cities that surpass us, but it’s all of the cities that were underneath us once upon a time.”
“The reality is, is it was just, it was all a corrupt boondoggle. Um, we lost 80% of our building stock in the downtown over the past 30 years. We didn’t gain more.”
“Well, you know, there’s a bunch of different ways it happens and it happens every different administration, but the net effect is we lost. So where we should have been a logistical center of the entire United States. We’re still talking about trying to just bring a super carrier, um, you know, cruise ship here. Well, you know, there’s a lot that needs to be done Tracy and it’s just been on autopilot. You know, I was here when the city converted from Democrat to Republican, and this was in 92.”
“And you know, the mayor’s race used to be decided by the Democratic primary because there were no, And then over the course of about four years, everybody switched party, taking all of that institutional knowledge with them, and they went Republican. And it was because at the time, the Democratic Party had just been kind of laughable. Like people were afraid that the Soviets were going to blow us up with a nuclear bomb. And the Democrats were talking about lesbian separatism and hugging trees. And it didn’t make a lot of sense to people our age, right?”
“Like the things we as a society, we decided that gay people had a right to be here and that, you know, Black people would make perfectly wonderful CEOs. And like, the 20th century has been completed. We’re done with it. And the parties have had a really hard time adjusting to the 21st century. And the 21st century is that, you know, we’ll have Google is already doing automatic translation in between countries. on a one-to-one basis and you can go on to your social media account and you can speak to someone in another country real-time in their language, right? That’s the type of business that was literally dreamlike in 1990, right?”
“And we’re burning the planet alive. And You know, it’s destructive and it costs a lot of money, which used to be something that conservatives paid attention to.” “…And we’re on the precipice of leaving the planet for our industry. And, you know, Tracy, which party is dealing with either of any of that?”
We’ll continue our discussion in Part Two.
** Music Tracks for this Podcast by Alex Grohl on Pixabay
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Until next time, Peace.
