Davis's "victory" speech makes it clear that he wants to be a mini-DeSantis as he explicitly stated so. DeSantis, the governor who has continuously worked to strip local rule and bring back all decisions to Tallahassee.... Whether undermining city ordinances, controlling local school boards, limiting how local elections are conducted, orchestrating how local school taxes are spent, how municipal utilities are operated (suspiciously, maybe to force the sale of JEA), how locally elected DA's should behave, how local health departments should be muzzled, how area water management districts should be run from Tallahassee, how state colleges should not ever disagree with him, how women should talk with their doctors, etc. This is the Davis that wants to be mayor of a city in which he will willingly give up control to DeSantis? Is that what the voters of Jacksonville want? No home rule?
Davis went on to misrepresent Deegan as anti-police and paint her as a "liberal." Yet, he still refuses to show what he stands for. However, if you follow the money ($5+ million, where do you think that came from?), you will see that he will be a lapdog for developers, power brokers, the Curry machine, etc., not a man of the people. An empty suit. A DeSantis want-to-be.
FYI, see Nate Monroe's post election analysis here: https://www.jacksonville.com/story/news/columns/nate-monroe/2023/03/22/nate-monroe-in-quest-for-mayor-davis-will-spend-deegan-will-work/70030698007/
You are very disconnected from the real right my friend. Davis is one of the biggest RINOs to run in a long time. He has a fairly progressive policy history while in the state house and as Chamber president. In fact, DeSantis and the current legislature are in the process of undoing some laws that Davis had voted for.
Davis was silent on basically all issues, but especially the cultural hot button issues that matter to most people, including conservatives. He was the only republican to not have a response to the monument issue, for instance. There was a huge scandal with JASMYN, which involves the *biggest* hot button issue to traditional family values conservatives, and while he runs as a "family values Christian conservative", he has danced around that and waffled and avoided bringing it up or answering questions. Why can't he just easily denounce an organization that hosted the "Saturgayz" parties marketed to teens as young as 13, or all the crap (such as dildos in the shape of a heart marketing the now infamous "penis game") that they posted on their Instagram while receiving sponsorship from taxpayer partially funded Chamber and the $180K they received from DCPS over three years?
We all know silence is capitulation to the "other side", so is he a DeSantis style conservative republican? Whatever he tries to tell the public now to rescue his campaign, his record would say absolutely otherwise.
He could have come across as authentic, even, by apologizing for not doing enough due diligence on the organization before sponsoring it, and promising that he had learned from his mistake and would certainly be more scrupulous as mayor, recognizing the need to be a good steward of taxpayer money and leaning truly into "conservative Christian family values" he says he has. That might have actually curried favor with the rest of us republicans who lost Tuesday.
In fact, those of us conservatives who really pay attention are smart enough to realize that he would be no different on many of those issues than Donna Deegan. He's a Chamber of Commerce republican and will say and do anything deemed best by big woke corporations who sway with all of the cultural tides and phenomena of the present age.
Why would we vote in someone we don't like and won't be the kind of R we want who *will* be there for 8 years when we can vote for the same thing in true form (Democrat Donna) who won't be so vicious and who will likely be a 4-year Alvin repeat with no real hard turns to the left (such as defunding police - she won't be that stupid)?
Davis is screwed unless Donna really royally screws up.
