Mayor Robinson Wraps Term, Political Career
by Jeremy Morrison, Inweekly
As Pensacola’s incoming Mayor D.C. Reeves begins his journey in public office this month, outgoing mayor Grover Robinson is bringing his own to a close. Robinson — who previously served 12 years as an Escambia County commissioner — announced he’d be a single-term mayor about halfway through his four-year term.
“When I ran for mayor, I made a commitment to myself that I wasn’t gonna do this for more than 20 years,” Robinson told Inweekly recently. “I mean, I thought I might serve one more term, but what happened through that year of COVID, social justice and then having the hurricane on top of it, at that point, it wasn’t fun to come in anymore.”
Mayor Robinson has aptly described his time as mayor as heavy on adversities, including a pandemic, Hurricane Sally, an internal assessment of the police department following a fatal shooting by an officer and social justice discussions dovetailing with a season of national debate. These events, as well as an increasingly heated partisan divide mirroring the bitter political war being waged nationally, began to wear on the mayor.
“My whole deal is not to push a side. The only side I really wanted to push was what’s best for the city of Pensacola, and that’s an inclusive Pensacola,” Robinson said. “Getting caught in these national narratives is not necessarily always the best thing for Pensacola.”
While these last few years have been particularly heated in discourse and rife with challenges, public service has always involved responding to such challenges, such as Robinson did during his time as an Escambia County commissioner when he headed up the response to 2010‘s Deepwater Horizon oil spill. And, even before that, when Robinson — the son of a state legislator — decided to jump into politics in the first place to respond to the crisis of Northwest Florida not fulfilling its potential: “I believed we could be better.”
“If you go back to 2006 and say, ‘Why did you want to run for office?’ Because I didn’t feel like we were making ourselves known as a community people wanted to move to and be a part of,” Robinson explained. “And I think we are now a community that has demand. People want to be a part of it, businesses want to be here, people want to be here, they see good things happening, and they’re excited to be a part of the city of Pensacola and Northwest Florida.”
While he plans to stay involved on the community level — “just because I’m not an elected official, doesn’t mean I can’t still serve the public” — Robinson said he’s confident that this is the right time for him to step back from politics. Looking back on his time serving the region — on trophies like ST Aerospace, Navy Federal and RESTORE — he’s pretty proud of the work he’s done.
“We have opportunities now that we’ve never had in northwest Florida,” Robinson said, reflecting on the area’s dramatic evolution over the course of his years in public office. “It’s exciting to say you were a part of that and helped make those things happen.”
— For a deeper discussion with Grover Robinson regarding his time in office, particularly the challenges over the course of his mayoral term, check out this issue of Inweekly online today at 11 a.m.