by Jeremy Morrison
With Pensacola’s mayoral candidates seated on the stage of the Rex Theater for their Aug. 2 forum, it was difficult to think they might reveal anything new about themselves or their vision for the city this late in the campaign, after so many similar events.
“I like to joke with them, ‘these are my roommates, Sherri, Steve and Jewell,’” quipped candidate D.C. Reeves, referring to the string of recent forums leading up to their appearance at the Rex.
For the most part, the evening held to expectations. Over the course of an hour-plus question-and-answer session at the forum hosted by the Pensacola News Journal, the mayoral candidates — Jewell Cannada-Wynn, Sherri Myers, Steve Sharp and Reeves — took the opportunity to reaffirm positions and visions that are pretty familiar to voters by now, weeks away from the Aug. 23 election and after five forums over eight days.
Cannada-Wynn stressed her educational background, years of experience sitting on the Pensacola City Council, and her humble upbringing and hopes to provide opportunities for future generations of Pensacola youth.
“I want our youth to know and have the same opportunities I had. I was them to know that there are no challenges that cannot be overcome,” Cannada-Wynn said.
Sharp focused on public safety — “if we don’t have a safe city, nothing else matters” — both his years of experience working as a firefighter, paramedic and sheriff patrol deputy, as well as with public safety in the school system, and also the need to bolster the city’s police and fire operations. He introduced himself as a “strategic thinker” and “problem solver” and also attempted to distinguish himself from the other candidates with a dig: “I am not the big money candidate, and I am definitely not the special interest candidate … I have not already spent a quarter of a million dollars trying to buy the mayor’s office.”
Myers heralded her involvement in realizing a climate adaptation task force and initiating a study of the Port of Pensacola, as well as her advocacy for the health of Carpenter’s Creek during her time as the District 2 representative on the city council.
“I have demonstrated good leadership, guts, courage and have gotten a lot of things done,” Councilwoman Myers said.
Myers has long bemoaned the lack of attention she feels is given District 2, as well as other areas of the city outside of the urban core. The candidate said she would seek to correct this if elected mayor.
“For 12 years, I have represented a district of the city that has been left behind. There are a lot of people in this city that feel that they have been left behind, and they have been left behind,” Myers said. “I am running to make sure that no one is left behind, that we have equity in this city.”
Reeves said his leadership of the city would be based on his experience as a business owner, as well as his time involved in municipal matters during his tenure as developer Quint Studer’s chief of staff. The candidate said the city’s leadership needed to become “intentional” and “urgent.”
“I’m not looking for another hobby; I’m not looking for a retirement job. I want to give the city where I’m from everything I have to make this the special place we all know it can be,” Reeves said, promising voters he could move the city forward. “As Quint Studer, my old boss, would tell you, ‘I don’t sleep real well unless I get things across the finish line.’ Maybe that makes me a little neurotic, but I think that’s a benefit for the city of Pensacola.”
While some distinctions between the candidates and their approaches were highlighted during the Rex forum — Myers, for example, considers herself an advocate for the homeless, while Reeves has little patience for downtown panhandling — there seemed to be a general consensus on the larger issues facing the city. All four mayoral candidates identified issues such as affordable housing and public safety as top priorities. Each agreed that going after federal infrastructure dollars and focusing on environmental issues like flooding were big concerns.
In the final days of this mayoral campaign, with voters as familiar as they care to be with the four candidates, it appears that the contenders are focused on reaffirming well-trodden territory and hoping their particular pitch and tone is the one that lands with the voters.
The Council needs to adopt an ordinance with respect to candidate forums: 1) they “all” need to be open to the public; 2) they need to be publicly noticed by the city; 3) the city needs to record them on video and post it to the city’s website; and 4) the city needs to hire a court reporter to make a verbatim transcript so everyone can read exactly what was said. The fifth “candidate” missing at the PNJ candidate forum was Escambia County Sheriff Chip Simmons, sitting next to and shining his magic on inexperienced D.C. Reeves. Is Chip going to get his own office in city hall too? Reeves keeps calling himself a “CEO” to include in an advertisement I heard this morning on Andrew McKay’s show but his work experience seems limited to being a sportswriter, bar owner and personal assistant/gofer for Quint Studer. Myers whines endlessly about District 2 that she ignored for 12 years. I can’t tell you how many times I told her to stop wasting her time on District 3 or 7 issues just because someone she didn’t know sent her an e-mail. Her standard reply was that the councilmember was “useless” and if she didn’t deal with it no one would. Sharp won this forum, again. Several of my neighbors recently told me that they voted for him because he seems to have common sense and would be a good mayor for regular working people. Cannada-Wynn did a pretty good job too. I appreciate her concern for the city’s failure to properly maintain our city parks. [Note to City Hall: For how many years will the drinking fountain in Eastgate Park remain broken? The guy cutting the grass this week crashed his mower into the Cox Cable box. Last night someone left a big glass bottle of Pink Whitney vodka out near the children’s playset where they must have had a nice party. Lots of beer cans too.] Still, no candidate is talking at all about reducing the size and cost of city government and then cutting city taxes and fees to make the city a more affordable place to live. No one is talking about making the city more resilient to include moving critical infrastructure out of the downtown storm surge zone and north to higher and drier ground. Everyone needs to read The Great Deluge about the horrors of Katrina. Lots of talk about the greatness of the PPD (Myers now saying the opposite of what she told me for many years) but no actual ideas about how to reduce crime in the city. My recommendations remain making the Police Chief and all senior officers actually live in the City of Pensacola, giving city residents’ priority in the PPD hiring process, helping city resident PPD Officers buy a home in the city to include a grant forgivable after ten years, and limiting the assignment of full-time PPD vehicles to city resident PPD Officers. Doing nothing different and praying that crime will just go away on its own will not work.