There were very few surprises last night when the Escambia County election results were announced. With less the 30% of the votes cast being by Democrats, GOP candidates did exceptionally well across the board.
The turnout for Democratic votes was 48%, while Republicans had a 64% turnout. Republicans Congressman Matt Gaetz, State Sen. Doug Broxson, Rep. Michelle Salzman, Rep. Alex Andrade and Escambia County Commissioner Robert Bender easily defeated their Democratic opponents.
Only one incumbent lost – District 6 City Councilwoman Ann Hill, who lose to Allison Patton, 55%-45%. Patton and District 2’s Charles Bare led in the August primary, and both won the general election.
One surprise is city voters rejected four of the five proposed city charter amendments. Only Amendment 4 – which will raise the council salaries by more than $20,000 annually in 2024 – passed, 55%-45%.
A decade ago, the council salaries were only $12,000 annually. During the Hayward administration, Councilman Larry Johnson led the charge to increase the pay to $21,000, arguing the higher pay would encourage more candidates to run.
In the Escambia County Commission District 4 race, Myra Van Hoose continually bashed Bender over the county’s 401(a) pension, accusing the incumbent and Commissioners Steven Barry and Lumon May of being more concerned about enriching themselves than helping the voters — an attack bolstered by the News Journal, Clerk Pam Childers and those seeking to change county government’s structure.
As Inweekly’s polling has shown, voters aren’t concerned about the issue. Bender’s victory validated the polling on the issue.
It’s no surprise that city voters rejected four of five charter amendments. But I can’t think of any reason why a city voter would have known that they were voting for or against a council pay raise with Amendment #4. The short version of a 21-year story is that in 2001 the council made a city law to form an independent citizens’ compensation task force that would meet every four years to set its salary. Councilman Larry Johnson served on both the prior Council-Manager (2009-2011) form of government and the Mayor-Council (2011-2018) form of government. He often said that councilmembers now did much less work in the new form. But in 2016, Johnson began to assert that being a councilmember was a “full-time” job and argued that they should be paid the same salaries as school board members. In 2016, Johnson proposed also transferring the power to set council salaries from the people (the citizen’ task force) to the council. He proposed increasing the council salary from $13,998.14 to $37,227 based on it being a full-time job. He did so “after” the end of the candidate qualification period to ensure no extra candidates ran in 2016. All four incumbents were reelected, two by default with no opponents. Councilwoman Jewel Cannada-Wynn cautioned that voters might get mad if they approved such a big pay raise in one jump. She persuaded the council to start first with a $21,500 salary and presumably after she was reelected a few months later, maybe in 2018, approve the full $37,227 or more. Councilman Gerald Wingate proposed for 2016 increasing the future council president salary to $28,500. It was all approved 5-2 with Councilman Brian Spencer absent for the vote to avoid having to vote. He told me in August 2016 that he was going to run for mayor in 2018. Council President Charles Bare presented an airtight case against the pay raise and voted NO. Councilwoman Sherri Myers voted NO saying that council members deserved a pay cut. An angry Councilman P.C. Wu turned to her and scolded “We deserve a pay raise!” As a sidebar observation state law mandates, “Each member of the district school board shall serve as the representative of the entire district, rather than as the representative of a district school board member residence area.” Amendment #4 does not provide special guidance as to how the Section 1001.395, Florida Statutes, school board compensation formula should be used for an unintended purpose. The formula provides for seven Population Groups based on the size of the district “served” by each school board member. A Pensacola City Council member only serves their own council district. When we had “at-large” council members, up through 2016, they served the entire city. According to the state, the city’s population as of April 1, 2021 was 54,490. One-seventh, the ideal district size represented by each of seven council members is 7,784. That puts the council member’s salary in Population Group I (0 to 9,999). Escambia County School District board members are in Population Group V (200,000 to 399,999). If the charter is next amended to apply the same apolitical formula to the mayor, he would be in Population Group III (50,000 to 99,999) in 2026, 2024 or with immediate effect depending on how the amendment is worded. The council may want to ask Director of Finance Amy Lovoy to work up the new council salary math in today’s dollars for future candidates to assess. Any way you shake it, it’s a lot more than in Gulf Breeze ($1).